Rebirth Point
by RedEndz
Summary: Would you like a chance to start a whole new life? Do you just want to escape to a place far away from where you were at? This is the place to go! 16 students have been invited to join this excellent program. Welcome to Rebirth Point and I hope that you will be satisfied with your second chance at living right here with us. SYOC Closed
1. A Second Chance

Chapter 0:A Second Chance

To the SHSL Designer, Kaneo Nanasaki

Hello there! Are you surprise by this message? I sure hope you did! It must be a surprise to get a message from a creature as beautiful as me! Sorry, but I will not take you as my partner~ Anyways~ Let move on to the juicy parts~.

Did you live a life full of regrets? A life full of guilt? A life full of pain and sadness? Or did you live a life full of happiness? A life full of love? A life full of acceptance?

Whatever life you lived as is in the past. If you wish to have a chance at a new life or wish to go some place where you know nobody and nobody knows you. This is where we offer you the chance! There will not be any chance such as this ever again! Do not miss this out!

Come join us where all your wishes and dreams come true. Now, let's hop on to the Rebirth Point! See you soon!

From the most beautiful creature in the whole wide world; Aoi.

* * *

 **Somewhere in a house located in Japan**  
A "ping" sound came out from a red and white handphone and the screen of the phone lights up in the dark room. One single finger swiped across the screen to unlock the phone. There is a message. A message that promises a whole new life for the reader. Black eyes scanned the words on the phone's screen.

As the owner of the eyes stopped at the word "Aoi", gears started turning in his head as a smile slowly formed on his face.

* * *

AN:Welcome to Rebirth Point! I should not be writing this as I literally have an examination in a few days time. However, my mind is in a mess with all the studying I did and I took a break to wrote this down. Anyway! Let me explain a little about this story.

This is a whole new story that does not link with any of the Danganronpa series. There is no tragedy and there is no Hope's Peak. There is a whole new "Monokuma" in this story who planned this whole killing game. An invitation is sent to 16 talented high school students (8 males, 8 females) through various means. In this story, it is similar to DR2, where the students were held inside a virtual world. However, it will not be an island this time and the students are the one who willingly accepts to go join in this world for whatever reasons they may have.

For the next chapter, it will be the main introduction of the MC of this story and a slight progression in the main storyline. The real prologue I would say. The MC of this story did come out in this chapter. However, not much was known. I will probably make a similar but more detailed short introduction for each character. This is where the "Before the killing game section" comes in. Depending on the characters I received, I may even introduce some of them in the same chapter, just in different place.

 **Rules (Please read this before moving on to the form):** **  
**1\. No Mary Sues or Gary Stus. This is self-explanatory.

2\. There is no first come first serve for the submission. I will select the best out of all the applications or the ones I felt will suit the best in this story.

3\. I do not accept characters who are found in another SYOC story or those who are in pending. One, it may not fit this story and two, it spoilt any surprise for your character if someone saw it in other stories. Hence, please create a new character for this story.

4\. Please do not send your character through the review, I will not accept any character from the review as it will reduce the element of surprise. That will be no fun at all.

5\. Talents from any of the Danganronpa series are allowed as they have no link to this story at all. However, please stray away from having the same characterization as the ones in the series who have the same talents. While I accept them, I would prefer to have a whole new talent and characters with new talents will have a higher chance of being accepted. This includes the more common talents found in the other SYOC stories as well.

6\. Please be as descriptive as possible. I do not mind it if you wishes to send me multiple messages if you cannot fit your application, in fact, I welcome them wit open arms. Descriptive applications are more likely to be accepted. If the application is obviously something that was put together in a matter of few minutes or without much thoughts at all, it will definitely not be accepted.

7\. Please make your character as unique as possible. It helps to differentiate them. However, please do not go over the top without a good reason.

8\. The deadline for this has been extened. Please take your time to create your character as I like well thought out characters.

* * *

The form can be found on my profile as well.

 **Form:**

*is optional

 **Name:** (FN/LN. In addition, what would they want to be called as?)

 **Age:** (15-18)

 **Gender:** (Male or Female. I have nothing against non-binary people. It's just that I felt I will not be able to write them accurately.)

 **Birthday:** (Day/Month)

 **Nationality:**

 **Race** :

 **Sexuality:** (Anything goes here.)

 **SHSL talent** :

 **Real Appearance Section** (what do they look like in the real life?)

 **Height:** (in cm)

 **Weight:** (in kg)

 **Eye colour** :

 **Hair colour and style** :

 **Build** :

 ***Markings:** (Scars, tattoo, etc.)

 **Normal Clothing:** (What they normally wear when they go out. Please make it so that it suits either their personality or their talent)

 ***Sleepwear:**

 ***Accessories:**

 ***Stimulation Appearance Section** (Some would want to change their appearance for whatever reason. However, please give them a human form, I do not wish for them to have an animal face or with wings or anything abnormal. However, if you wish to have them change their appearance in the stimulation, please give a good reason. Not everything in this section had to be filled up. You can choose to leave this section totally blank, it will not affect your chance in having your OC being selected.)

 **Age:** (do they make their appearance younger or older? If so, what age did they make it? Please do not abuse this.)

 **Height:** (in cm)

 **Weight:** (in kg)

 **Eye colour:**

 **Hair colour and style:**

 **Build:**

 **Markings:** (Scar, tattoo, etc)

 **Normal Clothing:** (They may want to change their clothing to suit their new appearance)

 **Sleepwear:**

 **Accessories:**

 **Reason for the change in appearance:** (This must be filled in if you decided to change their appearance. Give a reason for every single change you made.)

 **Personality Section**

 **Personality:** (I believe this is one of the most important section, please be as descriptive as possible. The longer it is, the better.)

 **Likes:** (5-7)

 **Dislikes:** (5-7)  
 **  
** **Fear(s):** (What are they afraid of?)

 ***Any physical problem?:** (eg, loss of limbs. However, they can "regain" back their lost limbs in the stimulation.)

 **Physical advantages:**

 **Physical disadvantages:**

 ***Any mental illness?:**

 **Psychological advantages:**

 **Psychological disadvantages:** **  
**  
 **Speech:** (How do they speak? Do they have a specific speech pattern? How do they sound like? )

 **Quotes:** (Please give at least 5 of them. Maximum 7.)

 **History Section**

 **Backstory:** (What happened in the past that gave them their talents. This is one of the most important section as well. Please be as descriptive as possible.)

 **Family:** (A brief description and their current status)

 **Friends:** (A brief description and their current status. If they do not have any friends, just put none.)

 **Before The Killing Game Section**

 **Why do they want to accept this program?:** (They do not necessarily need a tragic backstory to do this. Be as creative as possible while staying true to their character. This section is important as well.)

 **How was the message sent to them?: (** The message is the one in the story. You do not need to follow me and said that it is through a phone and in a bedroom I actually used the least creative one so that you can get more creative. This part will be used during the chapter with the characters' introduction. Hence, please be as creative as possible. It will be even better if you describe the place they were at when they receive the message.)

 **The Killing Game Section**

 **Reaction to the killing game itself:**

 **Reaction to the discovery of a corpse:**

 **Reaction to an execution:** **  
**  
 **Role in investigation (When they are not the killer):**

 **Role in investigation (When they are the killer):**

 **Role in trial (When they are not the killer):**

 **Role in trial (When they are the killer):**

 **Role:** (Do you think they would be a killer,victim or survivor? Please state a reason)

 **Motive(s):** (Why will they kill? What sort of motives triggered them to want to kill?)

 **Execution:** (While I know that not every character will be executed, please still fill up this section.)

 **Mastermind:** (Would you be willing to have your character as a mastermind?Just a simple yes or no question. I will choose my own mastermind and work it out from there.)

 **Relationships Section**

 **People they will get along with:**

 **People they will not get along with:**

 **Are they interested in being in a relationship?:**

 **If yes,what kind of people are they attracted to?:**

 **Others Section**

 **Other:** (What would you like to elaborate more on your character?)

* * *

 **Submitted Genders:**

Male: 11

Female: 11

 **Submitted Talents:**

SHSL Designer (My OC)

SHSL Acrobat

SHSL Toy Maker

SHSL Beast Tamer

SHSL Drama Club Leader

SHSL Homeopath

SHSL Confectioner

SHSL Tuba Player

SHSL Charmer

SHSL Thief

SHSL Commentator

SHSL Mentalist

SHSL Transhumanist

SHSL TV Host

SHSL Botanist

SHSL Street Fighter

SHSL Explorer

SHSL Handyman

SHSL Luck

SHSL Paranormal Investigator

SHSL Maid

SHSL Historian

 **Final Roster**

Accepted Characters:

SHSL Acrobat – Masanori Aradai

SHSL Mentalist – Lucien Mercer

SHSL Explorer – Michiko Okazaki

SHSL Commentator – Ikue Kurosawa

SHSL Homeopath – Takako Kawahata

SHSL Street Fighter – Rhett Greenfield

SHSL Tuba Player – Haruki Akiyama

SHSL Botanist – Lanfen Cheng

SHSL TV Host- Andrea Jensen

SHSL Transhumanist – Tetsuko Ayanokouji

SHSL Drama Club Leader – Boniface Hyakushi

SHSL Lucky Student – Kichirou Mutsumi

SHSL Handyman – Atsuya Nijimura

SHSL Paranormal Investigator – Akemi Oshiro

SHSL Historian – Felicity Camille Anastasia Rose Bellisario

* * *

Edit 1 (20/11) : My apologies,the birthday section from the form seems to got deleted somehow. I have already added that in. In addition, instead of following the time and date of my country, I decided to follow the time and date of this website instead. It will be easier for all of us and cause less confusion. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Edit 2 (25/11): In response to ComplicatedYetSimple's review, the concept will not be "Despair vs Hope". The mastermind this time will have a different motive, which I had already thought of. However, depending on the mastermind I choose from the OCs I receive, I may need to slightly change the motive itself.

Edit 3 (5/12):Deadline has been extended


	2. A Secong Chance II

Chapter 0: A Second Chance II

It was a beautiful day. Clutching a little girl's hand with his right hand, a young Kaneo led the small girl to a single park. A mixture of pink, brown and green assaulted their eyes as they got closer to the park. Families, friends, and couples gathered as they spent their free time together in that single park. The atmosphere surrounding the park was pleasant and calm.

The sounds of laughter,screams of happiness and conversations can be heard all around the two children. The little girl was skipping happily beside Kaneo as she swung their linked hands between them. She had a wide smile on her face as she looked at everything and everyone around her with curiosity. Slowly, they strolled around the park and eventually headed towards a tree and sat at the bottom of it. Leaning against the tree, Kaneo looks towards the sky. It was a clear day, the sky was blue, the sun shone brightly and the breeze was pleasant. With where they were sitting, thy were able to enjoy the weather as the tree provided shade for the both of them. It was indeed a very beautiful day.

It was truly a beautiful , why was it that he cannot see anything but black and white? Why iwas it that he cannot hear anything but silence? Why was it that he cannot feel anything but emptiness?

A body shot up from the bed and the boy buried his face in his hands as he panted harshly. Tears fell from his eyes onto his palms and they trickled down his arms before slowly wetting the blanket. The boy sobbed quietly as a huge wave of emotions engulfed him.

Even if he was able to turn back time, will he be able to protect himself and her from this world? In this world where there was so much evilness. In this world where unjust was everywhere. In this world where nothing seems to be good. It was better to leave this world for good.

A sound broke the silence in the room as Kaneo's handphone lit up with a notification. Unlocking his phone, he read the message before smiling to himself.

"This...is what we need."

 **3 months later**

In the message, instructions were given to the receiver. The receiver was required to call the phone number that was attached to the message if he or she wishes to join the program. After calling the number, a voice can be heard to confirm the participation of the receiver. After about 3 months, a transport vehicle will be found outside their house.

It has been 3 months since Kaneo called the phone number. He had been preparing himself for his participation in Rebirth Point. Hearing the sound of a car stopping outside his house, Kaneo stepped out of his house with nothing but the clothes on his back. It was requested by the voice that any participators would need to only bring their important things with them. Anything they want will be provided at the place they will be going into. After locking the door, Kaneo slided his keys into his house through the gap in between the floor and the door. Now, he will neither have the method nor the reason to return to his house ever again.

Stepping into the car, Kaneo mentally prepared himself for the long journey ahead of him. He sat on the seat closest to the window and looked outside at the passing sceneries. For many years he had been living in this town and it was finally time for him to leave. There was nothing holding him back in this town and he was actually looking forward to the place he was heading to.

It was currently spring, his least favorite season of the year. Cherry blossoms dotted the streets as they stand tall and proud. Looking at the scenery, Kaneo was reminded of the dream he had a few months ago.

While he did not have a very happy childhood, it was not that terrible as well. Everything was fine as long as he was with the little girl. He was fine. He was happy. He is happy. Yet, the strong emotions he felt in the dreams always got to him despite it being 10 years. However, he was very sure that the place he was going to will be able to change everything for him.

"Everything will be fine. I am sure of it." Kaneo mumbled to himself.

As his mind slowly starts to calm down, he closed his eyes as the sound of the car's engine lulled him into a deep, dreamless sleep.

A sharp knock pulled Kaneo back to reality and he opened his eyes before rubbing them with his right hand. He looked to his left and found his driver holding the car's door for him. He stepped out from the car and offered a smile at his driver and thanked him sincerely. The man gave him a nod before closing the door.

'What a strange man.' was Kaneo's thought as he watched the car drove off. During the trip, Kaneo woke up once and he tried talking to the driver to save himself from boredom. However, the driver kept his silence and refused to utter a single word. Having no choice, Kaneo return to his sleep to pass his time.

Stretching his body, Kaneo took a good look around him. He was at an airport, a very small airport that was located on the very outskirt of the town he was living in. Most people will not even come here as it was old and small. The airport was used to be owned by a small company that eventually went bankrupt. The plot of land was brought over by another company but no modification was made to the place. Instead, this place was used to store small aircrafts that were owned by the company.

His driver had dropped him off in front of an old hangar. Following the instructions on the message, he knocked the door seven times before shouting out loud.

"With the power blessed to me by Aoi, the most majestic creature in the world, I have revived once again!"

Immediately, Kaneo blushed and hid his face with both of his hands. It was super embarrassing to say that kind of sentence out loud. Why did they choose that kind of code anyway?! He will definitely give this "Aoi" a piece of his mind when they met.

As if mocking him, the door of the hangar remained closed and it shows no sign of opening anytime soon. Confused, Kaneo took out a piece of paper that he used to write down the code on it. Double checking it, there was no errors in what he said. But why won't the door open?

Kaneo reached his right hand out and just as he was about to knocked on it again, the door opened to reveal a suited man.

"Sorry, orders from "Aoi" told us not to open the door for you. It seems like they want to tease you for a bit." The man explained as he scratched the back of his head. "If it gives you any peace of mind, you are not the only one who got pranked."

Forget the plan of him giving "Aoi" a piece of his mind. If he was going to meet "Aoi", the first thing he was going to do is to wring "Aoi's" neck. Coming here no longer seem like a nice idea to Kaneo and he wordlessly followed the man into the hangar with heavy steps.

The space of the hangar was old and quite small; there were only a few numbers of aircraft being kept here. In addition, other than the two of them, there was no one around either, except for that one guy found laying on his back under one of the aircraft. What was he even doing anyway?

Kaneo was led to a corner of the hangar when the suited man stopped and kneeled on one knee before pulling open the door of a well-hidden hatchet. There was a long flight of stairs leading down towards the underground. It was dark in there with lighting that was barely enough to illuminate the pathway.

Without hesitation, the suited man led him down the stairs. The inside was like a maze with random turns appearing everywhere, the fact that the place has poor lighting does not help anyone in maneuvering around the area at all. However, the suited man seems to be very familiar with the place as he looks as if he just turned whatever direction he wanted and go down and up the stairs whenever he felt like it. If anyone who was not familiar with the place, they will definitely get lost.

Soon enough, Kaneo was breathing quite heavily and he started to slow down in his walking. While he was not very weak physically, he was definitely not an athlete and the constant going up and down of stairs were leaving him quite breathless. After all, he was a designer, he doesn't work out.

Finally, they reached the end of the maze as they stopped infront of a black door. Kaneo bent down and placed both of his hands on his knees as he tried to slow down his breathing. He should probably take up some sort of sports. It was quite embarrassing to see how out of shape he was.

Inside the room,16 pitch black capsules were lined up in one straight line. Some had their power on while others were off. It was impossible to know the content of the capsules. However, different names were inscribed on each individual capsules. The man led him to stand in front of a capsule with the name "Kaneo Nanasaki" on the surface of the capsule. The capsule had its power on as the suited man opened the lid of it.

After opening the capsule, the suited man turned to face Kaneo. "Here you are, you just need to step in and lay down. After that, you will be lead into a virtual world and you can live permanently over there if you wish to do so."

"You do know that the message I received explained basically nothing right? This will be the first time that I know about me entering a virtual world. What about my physical body while I was in there? Will I die of starvation or thirst?" Kaneo questioned the suited man.

"What?! Did they not explain it to you? Who the hell sent you that message?" Shock was plastered all over the man's face as he exclaimed out loud.

"…The very same Aoi." With a sense of dread, Kaneo answered carefully to the question.

"Oh. That explains it. Tough luck buddy. Anyways, your body will be fine; more details will be given to you when you were in the game. For now, just lay down inside the capsule." With an air of indifference, the man shrugged his shoulders.

Once again, forget anything about the plan to wring "Aoi's" neck. He will definitely kick "Aoi" a few times. You know what? He probably will still wring "Aoi's" neck after that. He was normally not a very violent person but this was a special case and "Aoi" was seriously testing his patience right now. He really starts to regret agreeing to the project.

Letting out a defeated sigh, Kaneo stepped into the capsule and laid down. He closed his eyes and tried to relax his body. A word of encouragement can be heard from the suited man as he closed the capsule. As he started to lose his consciousness, he whispered out softly to himself.

"Everything will be fine. I am sure of it."

Just like that, the world turned pitch black. There was nothing and he was nothing. From now onwards, Kaneo Nanasaki of the past was no more and he will now move forward with only a goal in mind.

.

.

.

Starting...

Scanning...

Identifying...

Kaneo Nanasaki

SHSL Designer

Age:17

Birthday: 5th July

Height: 175cm

Weight: 65kg

Hello Kaneo Nanasaki, the SHSL Designer. Welcome to Rebirth Point, your second life will start now.

* * *

"Seriously, did you also play a prank on Kaneo Nanasaki? How many was that already? You should be doing your job instead of shoving them to me and giving random orders."

"Awwwww, come on. Don't be such a bore. I was getting tired of waiting for all the students to show up. There's nothing for me to do, you know? I have already reached my quota of admiring myself for the day and I finished my job anyway."

"Yes, your finished job. Which I helped you to complete half of them. Why do I even need to help you anyway? You know that they are not going to be pleased with your little trick right? They would want everything to be perfect, it will be bad if anyone of them leaves because of your silly little prank."

"...I won't get in trouble right?"

"Good luck. I will leave some flowers on your graveyard after the end of this. What kind of flowers would you like?"

"... I am sure it will be fine, they loved the both of us too much to off us, right? RIGHT?"

"Don't worry, there is no way they will kill us. They need us for the plan to work. Though, you should be prepared for some punishment."

"I should probably stop...it will be a problem if they shred my soft and fluffy fur away."

"Urgh, stop praising yourself. I am going to suffer so much for the whole duration when I am with you."

"What can I do? It is natural to compliment something that is beautiful and I am one beautiful creature. Hey!? Where are you going?"

* * *

AN:

Hello! I am done with my examinations and before I acted on my urge to burn my school down, I am here with another chapter.

I know that I am not a very good author, so feel free to point out any mistakes I made as I wish to improve my writing. In addition, if you have any questions, just leave them in the review or just PM me. I will get back to you ASAP.

Just a heads up. While I did say in the previous chapter that this story will take place in a virtual world like DR2, that is the only similarity between the two stories. Of course, the usual class trials and executions will still be there but the setting will be totally different.

To those who are interested in this story, please send me an OC and remember to read the rules that can be found on the previous chapter! The form can be found both on the previous chapter and my profile page. Without enough OCs, I will not be able to proceed with the story.

To those who had already begun to create your character before this chapter came out, please note that I did a small edit on the form itself. I included the birthday in the form as I noticed that I probably accidentally deleted that without knowing. Sorry for the inconveniences caused.

Alright! Here is the end of my note. I hope you all enjoyed reading this chapter.


	3. A Second Chance III

Chapter 0: A Second Chance III

Have you ever wondered how different your life will be just because of some changes? What would your life be like if you did something differently? What would your life be like if you were born in a different place? What would your life be like if you are not you? What would your life be like if you were living the life of another?"

The person in the mirror who you were so used to seeing. What if one day it changed into a stranger? Someone who no one knew, someone who even the person in front of the mirror felt foreign to.

Despite all these questions in mind, most of us will never have a chance to know the answers. We have no choice but to continue living the life we were born into. Sure, you can try to change your life, but how many actually succeeded? How many of the succeeded can proudly say they were happy now? We can never change our past and we can never change our fate. If only there was a chance for us to do so.

A chance for us to change our current life. A chance that rarely presented itself to us. A chance to abandon your past. A chance to abandon even your appearance. A chance to totally cast away the "you" of this world. A chance for you to not even live in this world. Will you take this chance or will you let it go?

What exactly is your choice?

* * *

Kaneo was sprawled onto the floor with his face planted to the ground. He was unconscious as he laid there unmovingly. Slowly, his eyes fluttered open as he started to wake up. Grunting, he got up to his feet and looked around his surroundings.

He was standing on a floor painted with a blue sky full of slow moving clouds and a few blue birds can be seen flying around. The ceiling of the place was a pure white without a single design on it. Both the floor and ceiling stretched on endlessly and their end cannot be seen from where Kaneo was standing at. It was weird to see the floor and ceiling being inverted like that. It gave Kaneo a sense of uneasiness to see such scenery, it was as if everything was very wrong about this place.

Without warning, a few strings of binary codes started to appear in front of Kaneo and an image of a creature materialize as the binary codes faded away. A wolf of about 170cm (5'7") in length stood in front of Kaneo. The wolf had red fur covering most of his body while black fur covered its underbody.

He gave off an intimidating aura as he stared at Kaneo intensely.

Feeling cautious of the wolf, Kaneo slowly backed away from the wolf without taking his eyes off him. For every step he took backward, the wolf took a step forward. Feeling extremely nervous now, Kaneo picked up his speed as he stepped backward. If this continues, he may have to give in to his instinct to flee as fast as he can.

Unfortunately, Kaneo's reaction appeared to please the wolf as the wolf gave a feral grin, showing off his sharp fangs. Suddenly, the wolf stopped advancing towards Kaneo and plopped down onto the floor as he swayed his bushy tail sideways.

"Heya! You are finally here Kaneo!" A bright voice, that was unsuitable for the wolf's image, came out from the wolf's mouth as he gave a big wide smile. "I was getting so tired of waiting, you know? There is nothing fun to do at all!" The wolf whined as he rolled around the floor back and forth.

Kaneo stopped backtracking and stared at the wolf in confusion. A wolf with such an appearance having such a high and bright voice was weird. In addition, the character of this wolf reminded Kaneo of someone. Kaneo frowned in irritation as he thought about it and prayed that he was wrong.

"Hmm? Why are you keeping quiet? " The wolf questioned as he jumped up and sat on his hind legs as he swayed his head left and right repeatedly, with the same huge smile on his face.

"Just to be sure, what is your name?" Kaneo spoke up with slight anxiousness and he mentally started pleading to every deity he knew. Please give him a break; he came here to start a new life, not here to be someone else's source of glee.

"How can you not know me? This magnificent creature you are looking at right now is me! The great Aoi!" The wolf proudly declared as he looked at Kaneo with a grin.

"Aoi? The Aoi who sent me that message and the same Aoi who gave the order to not open the hangar's door for me?" Kaneo started pleading even more in his mind as he inched closer to Aoi.

"Ding Ding Ding! You are correct! I am the very same Aoi who contacted you!"

Kaneo lunged at Aoi the moment he finished talking and tried to grab at him. However, Aoi was too quick for Kaneo and he dodged out of the way of Kaneo's hands. This caused Kaneo to fall flat on the ground. Getting up, Kaneo glared daggers at Aoi as he scowled in exasperation.

"Woah! I know that I'm great and all that, but you still can't grab me out of nowhere." Aoi exclaimed.

Kaneo sighed in irritation; he should really take his decision to pick up sports more seriously. If not, he may never have a chance to get back at Aoi. Now that he thought about it, why was he named Aoi when he was red and black anyway? It did not made sense at all.

"Well, as much as I love to talk to you, I have a job to do. I am actually here to explain some things to you." As Aoi spoke, he jumped up from where he was sitting and moved to sit beside Kaneo instead.

In front of Kaneo, a few strings of binary codes started to appear in front of him again but this time, a human appeared. He had a short navy blue tousled hair. A pair of black eyes stared at Kaneo as the human stood very still, unmoving and unspeaking. He was tall and skinny with light skin colour. He was definitely not one who works out as he did not have much muscle on him.

He was wearing a white dress shirt with a dark blue vest over it, a red tie can be seen under the vest. A black coat with a silver zipper was worn over the vest and it stops at his hips. Black pants and dark blue shoes with white soles and red shoelaces accompanied his outfit. A black with light blue design beanie was worn on his head to complete his look.

It was Kaneo himself.

Sitting beside Kaneo, Aoi spoke up with excitement. "Now, you have the option to change anything you want for your appearance. Anything goes, as long as you are happy about it. In my opinion, you should definitely change your appearance, you looked so plain looking compared to me. There is no way someone is going to fall for your looks when I am right beside you. Do yourself a favour and try to change your appearance to be at least 1/7 of my beauty."

Aoi was seriously getting on Kanoe's nerve and Kaneo immediately gave a negative answer to Aoi's question. There was no reason for him to change his appearance and he doubt he will meet anyone who knew him in the stimulation. In addition, wanting to change his appearance means he had to tolerate more of Aoi's presence and he would rather avoid that.

"If that's what you want, than no changes shall be made! Well then, it's time for you to start the program. Hope you have fun!" Aoi tapped the floor three times as he replied to Kaneo's answer.

A black hole suddenly opened up directly on the spot Kaneo was standing at. With nothing to support him, Kaneo was pulled down by gravity and fell into the black hole. A look of shock and panic can be found on his face as he screamed bloody murder at Aoi.

"I will see you soon~" Aoi cackled as he waved Kaneo goodbye with one of his front paws.

As Kaneo fell through the hole, he prayed that he somehow will be able to avoid Aoi during most of the program. However, seeing as how Aoi loves to make his life difficult, Kaneo did not have much expectation. Eventually, he reached the bottom of the hole and fell onto a grassy ground with a loud thud.

Once again, he was sprawled on the floor with his face down. However, this time, he was conscious and lying down on a patch of grass. It was not his intention but he appeared to be getting all personal and intimate with the floor lately. He was pretty sure no one, including him, would want to have that kind of relationship with the floor.

Pushing himself up with his arms, Kaneo sat down on where he was at and scanned the area. Taking in his surroundings, he froze temporarily as he registered where he was currently at.

Of all places, why did he have to be at the park? Of all seasons, why did it have to be spring?

The park was decorated with a vibrant pink created by the multiple cherry blossom trees instead of the usual green and brown colours. The grasses were a calming green and the tree trunks were of a warm brown. Despite this, Kaneo felt nothing neither calm nor warm about the place he was currently at.

In a distance in front of him, there was a huge red crystal in a shape of a kite floating about 16 inches above the ground. It gave off a strong white and red glow which may blind anyone who stared at it for too long. However, Kaneo would rather be blinded by this crystal than to look at his surroundings.

However, what was truly surprising in the park was that there were many people around. Though, calling them people may not be exactly right. They were actually red and blue silhouettes. These silhouettes with the shape of humans were doing activities there can be found commonly in any park. Exercising, having a picnic, playing around and even couples can be seen spending time together. It created a happy picture to anyone who saw it.

However, despite having so many "people" around, there were no sounds at all. There was a clear lacking of laughter and conversations by these "people". Only the whispers of the wind and the rustling of the leaves can be heard clearly. If one was to strain their ears, they can even hear the sound of running water in a distance. In such a joyous situation, it actually seems really eerie when it was so quiet.

Kaneo did not take notice anything of this as he hurriedly stood up and ran out of the park. He ran past the silhouettes and even ran through some of them. Although, he failed to notice that he can actually physically pass through the silhouettes as his mind was a mess.

He crossed a wooden bridge with red railings and finally exited the park. He continued running and eventually stopped in front of a weirdly shaped building. Panting, he tried to slow down his breath as he used his left hand to wipe off the sweats that gathered on his forehead.

However, he noticed something on his left wrist. Something that was not supposed to be there. Pulling his arm away from his face, Kaneo took a good look at the item around his wrist. It was a thin, silver metal. There was no visible function and he cannot take it off either. Curious, Kaneo tapped the metal to see if it had any reaction but there were no changes to it.

Leaving with no choice, Kaneo left the metal where it was. Aoi will probably pop out from somewhere and explain, if he was even planning to explain it. For now, he would want to explore the oddly shaped building that was in front of him. A huge sign with the cursive words "Spring's Diner" was found on the building as well. The building was made of dark brown wood and it was standing in the middle with a row of wooden cottages on both of its' sides.

However, unlike the building in front of Kaneo, the cottages appeared to be slightly crooked as they all faced slightly to the side instead of facing directly in front. Kaneo walked towards the building and stopped in front of the wooden door before opening in.

Unlike the plainness of the outer appearance of the building, the inner appearance was totally different. Green vines curled themselves around the bigger pillars and small red flowers bloomed at random spots on the vines. A large wisteria tree can be found in the middle of the room and its' deep purple flowers hung down from the ceiling. White wooden chairs and tables were arranged neatly around the area and on each table; there was a pot of blue and white Nemophila sitting in the center of it. Even here, the silhouettes can be seen minding their own business.

Kaneo sat on one of the available chairs to relax and appreciate the interior design of the building. It was a nice change as compared to how it was in the park. While normally he was able to spend his time in a park even if it was spring, it was only because he knew he was going there. To be thrown to one without his knowledge or mental preparation, it caused his mind to short-circuit temporary. After he calmed down and explored this place, he will definitely go back to the park. He was quite curious about the crystal he saw.

Standing up, Kaneo walked to the back of the building. A single wooden door can be seen with a silver door knob. Opening the door, Kaneo looked inside. The inside of the room was a kitchen that was filled with items that were commonly found in a kitchen. Finding nothing interesting about the kitchen, Kaneo closed the door and walked out of the building. He was not one to cook anyway; in fact, he was quite bad at it. Someone will probably die from eating his home-cooked food.

Kaneo headed towards the cottages that were found beside Spring's Diner. They were normal looking, although they were facing at an angle for some reason. However, a single carp streamer can be found on the rooftop of each of the cottages. Each carp streamer was unique with their own different colours and designs. It was weird to see carp streamers as it was not even Children's Day in the real world and Kaneo doubted there will be any children coming to participate in this stimulation.

Other than the different carp streamers, all the cottages looked similar to each other and not a single difference can be seen from the outside. The doors were locked as well as they refused to open when Kaneo tried to open them. As he cannot explore further, Kaneo turned back and walked towards the park he was originally at.

A big river was found surrounding the park and the river flowed gently with the breeze. Small wooden boats were found floating on top of the river. On each boat, without any exceptions, there was a single silhouette rowing the boat. Cherry blossom trees surrounded both sides of the river and their flowers sway gently in the breeze.

Crossing the same arched wooden bridge with red railings, Kaneo stepped into the park and walked in a straight line. Soon, he saw the red glow of the crystal in the distance and he began to pick up his speed. The park appeared to be quite big as Kaneo had already walk quite a distance and he still had not reached the crystal. His stride was fast and stiff as he speed-walked towards the crystal. The closer he got closer to the crystal, the weaker the glow of the crystal.

Eventually, he reached the crystal and was able to look at it without the risk of being blinded by it. Walking that fast was probably a bad idea, he misjudged the distance he had to walk and was panting heavily with his heart beat erratically as he stopped in front of the crystal. After he regained his breath back, Kaneo touched the crystal with his left hand and a hologram appeared with some words floating in the air.

?

?

?

?

Spring Level

?

Touching the multiples "?" did not seem to change anything at all. However, when Kaneo pressed his fingers on the word "Spring Level", another hologram pops out. This time, the words "You are currently here" was seen instead. Looks like this crystal will be used as a form of teleportation to various places and the area he was at was named "Spring Level". Hopefully, teleportation by using this crystal will not be as nasty as how he came to this stimulation. Now that he thought about it, it was probably Aoi's fault anyway.

Having no alternatives, Kaneo continued his exploration in the park. However, there was nothing interesting to Kaneo about the park other than the crystal. The park was quite normal as common facilities like benches, a fountain and greenery can be found. While it was a beautiful park, Kaneo rather not stay there for a long period of time without any reason. He exited the park by crossing a different bridge which had dark blue railings.

After exiting the park, Kaneo notice a torii, a traditional Japanese gate, was standing in front of a large shrine. However, instead of the usual pair of lion-dogs statue standing guard, a statue of a fox and a wolf was found at the entrance. Upon closer inspection on the right statue, it was actually a statue of Aoi. Instantly, Kaneo had a huge headache as he remembered all the troubles he had to go through because of Aoi. Kaneo quickly walked past the statues and through the gate. Thankfully, there were no stairs where he had to climb, he was going to suffer so much if there was a long flight of stairs to the shrine.

Even in this place, the silhouettes can be found. They appeared to be everywhere in the stimulation and can be seen doing activities that normal people did. The shrine area was full of red and blue silhouettes and Kaneo tried his best to avoid colliding with them. That was what he did until a "child" run through him without hesitation. Puzzled, Kaneo stopped where he was standing and this had caused more silhouettes to pass through him.

Kaneo sighed, looks like all that dodging he did was for naught when he can just walk through them. How he wished Aoi was more responsible and explain things properly to him. He really should start working out to be able to at least punch Aoi once. That's all he asked for, a punch to Aoi for all the suffering he had to endure because of him. If Aoi was the only one who oversees the whole program, Kaneo will eventually go crazy. This whole program seemed to be a lot more trouble than what he thought it will be.

The shrine was like any other Shinto shrine, there was a building where one can cleanse their hands and mouth, a structure for people to hang their wooden plaques, an administrative office and even a small shop where people can buy different kinds of charms.

Heading towards the charm shop, Kaneo saw that a silhouette was manning the shop and selling the charms to the other silhouettes. Again, they were speaking to each other but Kaneo cannot hear anything they said. It was just silence to him as if someone pressed the mute button on the silhouettes.

Kaneo walked out of the shop without buying anything. He had never buy charms for himself and he did not have any money anyway. How does one even earn money in this place? Even if he wanted to buy the charms, he will not be able to do so without earning money somewhere.

As Kaneo left the shrine and once again walked towards the park, he cannot help but noticed that he had not met with any of the participators. He should not be the first to be here as some of the capsules were already on when he got to the room. Maybe he was not as observant as he thought or the area was too big with so much "people" around. While the silhouettes themselves were translucent, it was still hard to see through them clearly. That might be why he missed the other participators, he probably already walked past some of them without knowing.

As Kaneo walked, he started to look around him closely so as to spot one of the participators. He will probably meet one of them if he took careful note of his surroundings. However, the multiple silhouettes really made it difficult to notice anyone.

Suddenly, Aoi's voice emanated from the sky and it can be heard throughout the whole place. "It's me again! How is everyone doing? Now that everyone had shown up in Rebirth Point, it's time for me to grace all of you with my presence! Come over to the red crystal that was found in the middle of the park. See you soon~"

"Of course it had to be the park, my life will never be easy huh?" Kaneo muttered darkly to himself as he continued his way towards the park. He was feeling quite excited to meet the other participators despite the park being the meeting point. Who knows, he may even get along quite well with some of them.

"Even if I am here, everything will definitely be fine. If not, I will make sure everything is fine." Kaneo quietly promised himself as he continued to walk towards the park.

* * *

A/N: The map of the area is at the website below (can be found in my profile as well) you may want to look at it.

postimg /image/69pnpu66l/ (Add .org after postimg. If any of you cannot view the image, please notify me. )

Is the drawing out of shape? Yes. Am I a good drawer? No. So, please excuse my bad drawing XD.

Anyway, I am here with another chapter. Although it was more of the third prologue since the other casts are not out. In this chapter, the theme and appearance of the first chapter were revealed. Hopefully, you all are able to visualize the place and buildings from what I wrote. If not, at least the drawing I drew can help you to visualize better.

For the next few chapters, it will be the introduction of the remaining students. Since there are 15 characters to introduce, 5 characters will be introduced per chapter. Therefore, the next 3 chapters will be introductions.

Technically, each character will have 2 introductions. The first introduction will mostly be from "Before the Killing Game Section". In this way, we will know more about their characterisation before I start killing them off. (Especially for the victim(s) and killer for the first trial.) The second introduction will take place in the stimulation, where some of their appearances had been altered. This is where the full appearance of the characters will be known and their interactions with each other can be seen.

Thank you to those who submit their OCs to me, I really appreciate it. However, I still need more characters to choose from. If I did not manage to get the amount of characters I want, I will probably extend the deadline.

Thank you for reading this story, I hope this chapter is interesting to all of you.

Edit 1 (5/12): The deadline has been extended.


	4. First Introductions

Chapter 0.1: First Introductions

Masanori Aradai

SHSL Acrobat

Age: 17

Birthday: 29th May

Height: 173cm

Weight: 67kg

Grinning from ear to ear, Masanori Aradai walked on top of a row of metal railings before he did a backflip and took off running the moment his two feet touched the ground. The feeling of wind on his skin, the exhilaration he felt from what he did and even his increasing heartbeat, he loved it all. He loved the feeling of being able to let both his mind and body be free as he moved around with his own limbs.

He waved and greeted cheerfully to the people he knew as he went skipping down the road. Occasionally, he will randomly do a flip here and there and even jumping over the things around him. He gained quite a few attentions from the others as he went his merrily way.

Pure joy was exactly the feeling he was experiencing right now.

Free of his worries, free of his shackles and free of his past, Masanori was truly happy to be able to do what he wanted. However, he was only a normal human being, and he too, would have some limitations as well.

As if wanting to prove his own point, he placed both of his hands on the floor and kicked his legs high up to the air. Despite countless people staring at him, he walked with both of his hands as he ignored the looks given to him by others.

After quite a distance, he felt exhaustion setting in as he struggled with his task of walking with both of his hands. Giving up, Masanori pushed himself off the ground with his hands and landed on his feet splendidly.

Suddenly, a sharp pain blossomed from his right arm. Looks like he had pushed himself too much today, he would need to avoid putting anymore strain on his right arm. Clutching his right arm with his left hand, he walked up to his house and unlocked his front door with his key.

A soft meow, followed by soft thudding on the floor, could be heard as he opened his front door. Soon, a fat orange tabby cat came into his line of sight and meowed cutely at him. Purring, the cat constantly walked in between his legs as it rubbed its whole body on Masanori's legs. Soon, Masanori's pants were covered with the fur of his cat.

As Masanori looked down on his pet cat, he noticed a black and purple envelope on the floor. Bending down and picking it up, he flipped the envelope to the other side and saw his name written in cursive bluish gray ink.

Guessing that it was just his monthly letter from his parents, Masanori carelessly tossed the envelope into his drawer that was filled with his other letters from his parents. He decided to read the content of that letter after his bath.

However, he totally forgot about the existence of that letter of his when he got out of his bath. It was only at night when he was relaxing on the couch with his pet cat sleeping on his lap that he remembered.

The poor sleeping cat got a shock of its life as it toppled off Masanori's lap when he got up suddenly to look for his letter. He had forgotten where he putted the letter and was panicking internally. Giving a quick apology to his cat, Masanori ransacked his whole house as he looked for the letter.

Finally, he found the blue envelop and carefully tore it open before taking a piece of paper out from the envelope. As he was expecting the envelope to be from his parents, Masanori was quite surprise to see that the letter was from an unknown person named "Aoi". He rarely had any letters addressed to him other than the usual monthly letters from his parents so he was quite taken aback when he noticed it was from someone he did not know.

The letter spoke of a new world, the world where Masanori can finally be able to do what he wants and a world where he can finally be free from his shackles.

Without hesitation, Masanori dialed the number that was found on the letter and waited for someone to pick up. Absentmindedly, Masanori petted his cat as he waited and loud purrs filled up the silence of the house.

Soon enough, a greeting from someone came through the phone and Masanori can no longer hear his cat's purrs as he concentrated on the voice from the phone.

Surely, he will be able to get what he wanted from participating in this program.

* * *

Lucien Mercer

SHSL Mentalist

Age:17

Birthday: 27th April

Height: 165cm

Weight: 65kg

A young man carefully looked around his surrounding as he mentally ticked off his check list.

'I just passed by the watch shop and I will need to make a turn at that corner where the bank will be at. After that, I will need to make a turn at small playground and I will be able to see the shopping mall in the distance.' Lucien Mercer thought to himself as he made careful observations around him. If he was not careful, he was going to get lost again and he would definitely not want that to happen to him.

Eventually, he reached the shopping mall that he wanted to go. It was the weekend; there were tons of people walking around with either their friends or family. This place usually gets real busy during the weekend and people would often accidentally bump into each other.

Stepping into the grocery store, Lucien grabbed a shopping basket as he begun to look for the items he wanted to buy. Holding the basket with his right hand, he went from aisle to aisle to get what he wanted. It was really crowded in the grocery store too; Lucien constantly had to dodge out of some of the people's way to avoid colliding into them.

If he can, he would rather visit the store during the weekday instead of the weekend. However, he was too busy with his school and job that he had no choice but to do his grocery shopping during the weekend when it was packed with people.

Eventually, he finally got what he wanted from the grocery store and went to the cashier to check out his items. Carrying plastic bags filled with his purchases, Lucien walked out of the store and began to make his way back home.

While Lucien was walking towards the exit of the busy shopping mall, he bumped into a strange person who wore a pure black hoodie and a black cap by mistake. Being the skinner person than the strange person, Lucien fell to the ground and his purchases were scattered all around him. Unfortunately, everything happened so fast that he was unable to get a clear look at the stranger.

Cursing silently about that stranger and his own bad luck, Lucien got back to his feet and looked around him. However, the stranger had already disappeared into thin air and was nowhere to be found. Lucien muttered angrily to himself about that rude stranger as he gathered his scattered items and putted them back to the plastic bags.

After careful observation, Lucien finally reached his home. Greeting his mother, who was not working that day, he went to put the groceries down on the table as he prepared to sort them out. He stretched his whole body and cracked his knuckles. He was tired from all that walking and carrying of the heavy groceries from the shopping mall to his home.

As he got to the last bag, he noticed a single letter in it. A pure white envelope where his name was written clearly with purple ink.

Setting the envelope aside, Lucien continued sorting out the items but this time, with greater haste in his actions. He wanted to finish his task as fast as possible so that he will be able to look at the content of the letter. It was clearly suspicious, as he did not recall putting that letter into the plastic bag. In addition, his house address was not even written on the envelope and whoever wrote that letter had putted into his shopping bag personally.

After he finished sorting out the groceries, Lucien went to his room after telling his mother about his completed task.

Opening the envelope, Lucien found a letter addressed to him by someone named "Aoi". Thinking back, there were not much people who were able to slip that letter into his bag without his notice. The only two people were the cashier and the stranger who bumped into him. However, he was looking at the items that were putted into his bag and he did not see any letter being placed inside the bag by the cashier. Hence, the only person who can put that letter into his bag was that stranger who bumped into him.

That person must be Aoi.

Reading the content of the letter, the light that dimmed into nothingness started to shine again in Lucien. If this was not a joke, then there was a chance for him after all. A chance for him to correct what was wrong.

Just like this pure white envelope, if he participates in this program, Lucien may become pure white too. This time, he will make sure history will not repeat itself again.

* * *

Michiko Okazaki

SHSL Explorer

Age: 18

Birthday: 31st September

Height: 176cm

Weight: 56kg

The front door of a house slowly swung opened as a tall woman appeared from behind the door. She tiptoed into the house and closed the door as softly as she can.

It was currently night time, she will need to be as quiet as possible to avoid waking her family members up as they were probably asleep at this time of the day. Making as little noise as possible, Michiko took off her beige hiking shoes and placed them in the shoe cabinet. She had just come back after a few months from one of her expedition with a group of professionals and she really needs her bath and sleep now.

With someone noticing her potential and deciding to sponsor her, Michiko was able to improve her skills to the point that it was on par with a professional. Some people may even say that she was even better than some of the professionals from all around the world. Despite her young age, she was very good at what she was doing and this had led to her gaining fame and fans from all around the world.

However, while she was happy that she was able to achieve her dreams of exploring the world, some things will always be missing in her life. Things that she wanted desperately but cannot achieve no matter how hard she tried.

Taking her sleepwear from her room, she went to take a quick bath to refresh herself. After her bath, she went back to her room and sat at her desk before switching on her computer.

While she was quite tired and needed her sleep, she was excited to start working on her article about her recent exploration so that she will be able to post her discoveries online as soon as possible. She was eager to share it with the whole world so that they will be able to appreciate what she saw as well.

Getting her journal which she brought with her during her journeys, she opened the book and skimmed through her entries. Detailed writings and drawings which were written and drawn by Michiko herself were found in the journal. It was these writings and drawings made by her that she got so popular worldwide.

Crossing her leg to make herself comfortable, Michiko opened her email to answer some of her mails first before starting to work on her article. Soon enough, the tapping sounds of the keyboard replaced the silence of the room as she concentrated on her task.

However, not long after she started on her article, her computer notified her of a new mail from her online personal email. Curiosity strikes Michiko as she went to open the new mail to see if it was some sort of fan-mails or any of the most formal mails.

Michiko only had to scan through the content of the mail once to find out that someone was inviting her to a world where she could know and get what she was missing in her life. While the email of the sender is unknown, the bottom of the message was signed by someone named "Akai". Michiko did a quick mental scan to remember if she had met anyone named "Akai" before and it came out negative.

Not only was the message different from usual, the appearance of the mail is different too. Instead of the usual white background found in any of the email websites, the background is a dirty blond instead. The words were written in brown instead of the usual black.

Despite the clearly suspicious email, Michiko's curiosity of all these years fueled her and she decided to accept the mysterious proposal. However, she did not truly believe this is true and a huge part of her mind thinking that it was just a stupid spam message. Nevertheless, she decided to give it a try and made a call to the phone number that was provided in the message.

A tired voice answered her call and as Michiko listened to that voice, she realized that it was not a spam message nor was it a prank from someone. It was real and she had just accepted to participate in some kind of program.

Pumping her fist into the air, she gave a loud cheer after ending the call. However, she stopped her cheering as one of her family members shouted at her to keep her volume down. Looks like she forgot that it was currently night time and her family members were all sleeping.

Scanning the email again to confirm that it was real, Michiko wrote down the details of what the voice had just told her in her journal.

It appeared that she had found her destination for her next expedition.

* * *

Ikue Kurosawa

SHSL Commentator

Age:17

Birthday: 4th April

Height: 169cm

Weight: 54kg

The sound of a baseball ball being hit by a baseball bat echoed throughout the whole stadium. Some players were found running towards the ball while others were desperately running towards their next base. The whole stadium was packed with audiences and not a single seat was left empty in the stadium.

The game was heating up as it was currently the second half of the eighth inning and this game can either resulting in them being tied or one team being victory. Tension was so high at the baseball field that one can cut it with a butter knife as both teams compete aggressively to win for their own country. One team victory can mean the other team's defeat and neither of the two team would want to be at the losing end.

Loud cheering can be heard as fans screamed and hollered encouragements to their favourite team. Banners were seen being held up high by the people and some of them even stood up out of excitement.

Among all these cheering, two voices can be heard announcing the ongoing of the game. One of the two voices was a young female who gave her own comments about the game. When she gave her comments, it was similar to a rapid fire machinegun; it was as if she did not need to breathe at all. Despite her non-stop talking, everyone was actually paying very close attention to what she was saying while concentrating on the game. Not a single person in the stadium actually tuned her out just to concentrate visually on the game.

The name of the female commenter was Ikue Kurosawa, a young woman who was getting famous in the world due to her commentaries. Her commentaries were always detailed and gave much laughter to the audience, allowing the audiences to feel entertained and yet gaining the knowledge they needed. Recently, there were an increasing number of people who love her commentaries and she was slowly getting more fans and fame in the world.

Eventually, the defending team of that round managed to out three members of the other team. With the scores being accumulated at that point, both teams had actually tied. Everything depends on the next inning and the victor will be known.

During the short break that was in between each inning, Ikue was having an argument with her Danish co-announcer Martin. The two had been bickering about who they personally believed would win since the two teams had actually tied.

Sometime during her argument with Martin, her phone vibrated with an incoming message. However, she was too engrossed with her discussion with Martin to take any notice of her phone.

The argument was getting more intense with each second and it ultimately culminated in Ikue kicking Martin in the shin and walking out from where they were at. Calming herself down, Ikue pulled out her phone and checked if she received any new message. Noticing the new message, Ikue unlocked the phone.

Once she opened the message, a black background with hazel colour words greeted her. It was quite hard to see the words clearly due to the bad colour contrast but Ikue managed to read it. Reading the message as quickly as she can as she needed to go back to her job soon, Ikue was very sure that she was going to accept the offer once she finished reading.

In the new world where everything is new, she hoped that she will be able to find what she was looking for. Since she was unable to find it in the real world, she will make sure that she find it in this virtual world. After that, her life will be colourful like it used to be again.

Locking her phone, Ikue walked back to the commentary box to return to her commentary job with Martin. Despite her argument with Marin just now, she was now quite excited due to the content of the message. That message had just put her in a good mood and she was no longer that agitated from her fight with Martin.

However, her official acceptation to the offer had to wait for now; the game wasn't even over and she will definitely gave a call once the game is over. It will probably be the last inning and she cannot wait for the game to end quickly. She will give her all like always and make sure everyone enjoyed her commentaries.

Picking up her speed, Ikue walked away light-heartedly as she looked towards her participation in the program.

* * *

Takako Kawahata

SHSL Homeopath

Age:16

Birthday: 2nd February

Height: 152cm

Weight: 48kg

Takako was sitting down at the table making her next batch of medicine for her clients. In just a few minutes, her next client will be coming to visit her for their medicines and Takako was currently finalising the preparation of the medicine for that client.

From her actions, one can see that Takako came from a well-to-do family as she carried herself with dignity and has excellent manners. The way she moved and does her job was elegant as well and it spoke volumes about her background.

Many people were drawn to her due to her personality as she was a very respectable young lady and you cannot help but like her for who she was. In addition to that, she was very compassionate and would always remember personal details of her own patients when she made small chats with them. Due to this, her patients often felt valued and thinks that she was actually helping them out of her own good will and not because it was her job to do so.

Furthermore, she was really good at her job as well as she was able to cure many of her clients' illness despite the hospital failing to do so. As words about her success spread, more and more people had been coming to book an appointment with her. Takako would always attend to them and even when it was something not in her area of specialisation, she will recommend them to other places.

These are all part of why she became so successful despite her young age and lower experience in the medical field as compared to the others.

Hearing the door bell rang, Takako went to open the door and it revealed her client.

Her client this time was an old woman. The old woman was suffering from quite a bad cold for a few weeks and despite going to the hospital initially to get her medicine, she was not getting better at all. That was when her neighbor introduced Takako to her.

Soon enough, with daily intake of Takako's medicine, the old woman had been getting better and it was currently just a small cold now. From her own personal experience from how good Takako's medicines were, the old woman had been spreading the news to her fellow friends and even brought different kinds of medicines from Takako too.

However, the old woman appeared to be holding a rolled up poster and offered to Takako.

The old woman explained that she had received it in the mail and took a look at it, but she did not understand what it was and simply assumed that it was some sort of other alternative therapy. Hence, she brought it along with her to ask Takako if she knew what it was due to Takako's knowledge in the medical field.

Rolling open the poster,Takako noticed that the poster had a black background with dark green wordings on it. After reading the poster, she did not understand what the poster meant as not much detail was given. However, she kept the poster with the intent of doing some research on it after finishing her work for that day. She asked every client she had that day about the poster but no one knew what it was.

At night, when Takako had just opened her door for her last client to leave, she went on the research the poster on the internet. When her research came up with nothing to note of, she went ahead and made some calls to ask the people she knew about it.

Unfortunately, no one knew the poster and she had no choice but to give up on her research. Despite the futile search, Takako continued to keep the poster in hope that one of her future clients will know about it.

It was only after a few weeks that Takako would have received a more detailed 'information pack' about it through her work email account. It was at that point of time that Takako would realise the significant of the poster as she brought it out to compare with the mail she received.

She was relatively happy with her current life where her work as a homeopath had cured quite a large number of people and she was quite successful in her line of work. Despite that, she has something she wanted too. Something that had caused her to accept Rebirth Point. Something that she wanted to change in her life.

If she went to Rebirth Point, surely she will be able to change her life.

* * *

AN:

Sorry for the wait, I wanted to get this chapter out earlier but real life had been slapping me in the face lately.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter, if there are any mistakes I made, please feel free to tell me. Especially if I made any of the characters too out of character. While I do play softball a few times in my life, I did not play baseball at all. Therefore, there might be some mistake regarding the baseball game in Ikue Kurosawa's introduction.

For now, these are the five characters I had accepted. To be honest, I would want to have more characters to choose from. Therefore, I am willing to accept second OC from the same creator. If you want, you can send me your second OC.

So? How do you guys like these five new characters? I had quite a lot of fun writing them and I am really glad I decide to write the introduction this way. It really allows me to understand them all better.

Just one question, would you guys want me to include the free time event in this story?

Okay, I should stop here since no one want to read a long AN anyway. I am off to spam FGO. BYE!

Edit 1(12/12): Changed Michiko's SHSL to her proper one. Thanks ComplicatedYetSimple for pointing that out!


	5. Second Introductions

Chapter 0.2: 2nd Introductions

Rhett Greenfield

SHSL Street Fighter

Age: 18

Birthday: 24th August

Height: 187cm

Weight: 79kg

A young man with short spiky red hair walked down the hallway of what seemed to be an apartment building, his ears, and cheeks still bright red from the cold. Whenever he opened his mouth, puff of white clouds came out from his mouth due to the cold.

Various conspicuous noises can be heard behind many of the room's doors. He stopped in front of one of the doors where loud shouting can be heard coming from the other side, the room number had been long gone but the door was still in better shape as compared to most of the others. The young man pulled off the glove from his left hand before reaching deep inside his trench-coat pocket, pulling out a key.

As his hand left his pocket, dried blood, scars and calluses can be seen covering his knuckle. In fact, both of his knuckles were covered in some kind of wounds. In no hurry, he used the key to unlock the door and went inside, stepping onto a pile of unread mail.

He growled, before closing the door.

The apartment was absolute crap. The floor was covered in dirt, cans and food wrappers; there was also a small, but ominous hole in the middle of the room. The only piece of furniture was a ratty couch, where another young man currently sat, making out with a well-endowed girl sitting on his lap. The only light source came from the old bulky television standing a few feets in front of the two lovers. Another young man sat on the floor playing video games, shouting at the television screen as he made an impressive fail on his part.

The red head watched the scene with dead green eyes for a moment, showing no emotion, before scoffing in disgust. He removed his clothing and hung his coat on the rack. Noticing his bloodied knuckles, he glared at them for a moment before slamming his fist into the wall, hard, causing a loud slamming noise. It startled the couple and caused the male to turn and glared at him.

"You damaged the wall?" The male asked in displeasure.

The young man frowned, creasing his eyebrows, as a large scar on his forehead became more defined before looking over the wall.

"No," he replied in a soft voice, "Still intact."

The other male threw back his head as he laughed obnoxiously, "I don't know if I should be impressed by the wall, or disappointed in you! Hahaha!"

The other male turned back around and continued his make out session with the girl. Rhett stood by the door for a moment, completely unmoving, before reaching inside the other pocket of the trench coat, and pulled out two fifty dollar bills.

He walked to the couch, dropping the two bills onto one of the cushions before continuing making his way towards a short hallway.

The girl pulled away slightly from the other male as she quickly snatched them up, "Only a hundred?!" she yelled at Rhett.

Stopping his motion, the red head called back, "I decided I wanted to take it easy today."

The guy scoffed, "You're not paid to take it easy, you're being paid to fight!" The young man continued to stand in the hallway, facing away from them. The man was silent for a moment, watching the redhead carefully and he spoke slowly, "You got a letter in the mail. I placed it on your bed." He then returned his attention back to the girl on his lap. Not a second after that did the boy vanished through the nearest door, closing it behind him.

He's now inside a small bathroom, just a small cheap tub, toilet, sink, sink cabinet and mirror. It was just as run down as the rest of the apartment, but admittedly a lot cleaner. He glanced at the tub which consisted of a pillow and two blankets covering the tub's floor. That was his bed.

He noticed a red envelope, with his name being written in green, sitting on his pillow. He looked at the envelope for a moment, before turning to the mirror.

"First things first," he said as he pulled up and removed his sweater. Tossing it into the sink cabinet, his muscular torso, sculpted abs, chest, and shoulder was revealed. His upper body looked quite powerful; a small patch of red hair on his chest and another tuft peeking out from under the top of his jeans. He had a silver belly-piercing, a tattoo of a Chinese dragon on the back of his right shoulder, the word "Fight" on his right forearm, "Love" on his left. However, none of this was what he was focusing on.

He quickly began to examine a large black bruise on his rib cage and took a moment to register, "I won't be as quick. Will be favouring my left side for a while," he shrugged it off, "Easy to compensate for."

He walked over to the tub and slowly lowered himself into it. He propped himself up with the pillow and grabbed the envelope. He saw something that he didn't notice before, a black seal, and, surprisingly it was still intact. "Must mean he didn't open it." the young man thought to himself. Noticing a word stamped onto the seal, he brought the envelope closer to him, trying to read it. It was the word "Aoi" surrounded by a heart. He shrugged as he opened it up, pulling out a letter apparently addressed to him.

 _To the SHSL Street Fighter, Rhett Greenfield_

His mouth twisted into a wide grin after reading the whole letter. He laid back into the tub, laughing as he threw the letter and envelope into the air and they float gently down onto the floor.

"This!" He announced to himself, "This could change things for me! This can change things for me!"

He paused and muttered to himself, "I can change."

* * *

Haruki Akiyama

SHSL Tuba Player

Age: 18

Birthday: 30th December

Height: 152cm

Weight: 55kg

The sound of a metronome ticking away was being drowned out by a deep and bouncy sound. It filled up the spacious room as a lone young man practiced his instrument while keeping his eyes on both the metronome and his scores.

The room was fairly big with spacious space and high ceiling and it was currently being used as a band room. It was filled with chairs, stands and instruments were found either on the chairs or floor. A trophy case can even be spotted at the back of the room and it was packed with multiple trophies the band had won. A conductor stand was found at the front of the room with an electric keyboard beside it. In addition, two speakers were found a few feets away from the conductor stand.

The young man was playing his tuba perfectly in tune without a single note being too sharp or flat and the emotions invested in the notes he created was exactly right for the current music he was playing. He was sitting up on only half the chair with his back straight as he rested his tuba on his lap.

His name was Haruki Akiyama, a young man who was the best Tuba player in his age group. However, it was not because of raw talent that he was able to be the very best. It was only because of the huge amount of time that he spent on practicing that allowed him to be that good at it.

The band members were having a training camp of five days and four nights in the school in order to practice for the upcoming competition that was about one month away. Currently, he was alone in the band room with no one around as it was break time for the students.

Haruki continued practicing his part from the score even as the other students chatted and rested during their break time outside of the band room. It was not like he had any close friends who were in the same band as him anyway. Hence, he will just spend his break time practicing after resting for a short time.

True to be told, he had already perfected the individual parts in the score that was needed for the competition and was just practicing to further improve his lung capacity. It was also to spend his time before the practice with the rest of the band starts.

Haruki stopped his playing to change the speed on the metronome before flipping his file to the next page. However, instead of the usual black and white score, a piece of black paper was found. Looking closely, words in dark brown can be seen on the piece of black paper.

 _Turn on the speakers._

Only those four simple words were written on the black piece of paper.

Having nothing to do, Haruki decided to follow the instructions on the paper. After all, he was done with his practicing for now. Putting his tuba carefully down on the floor, Haruki stood up from his chair and walked towards the power plug of the speakers to turn them on as they were previously turned off by the conductor.

As soon as he turned them on, a voice blasted from the speakers causing Haruki to jump in shock as he quickly covered both of his ears with his hands. He was unable to make out the words that came out from the speakers due to the loudness of it and he quickly tried to lower down the volume of the speakers but to no avail.

Seeing as turning the volume down was not an option, Haruki went to switch off the power from the power plug itself. It was only then, did the noise stopped. Haruki sighed in relief as he rubbed both of his ears harshly to get rid of the pain caused by the loud noise.

Fearing that the same thing will happen again, Haruki did not dare to approach the speakers and instead went back to his seat. He took out the piece of black paper from the file and threw it away as it did nothing but caused him harm. Having no other choices, Haruki went back to his practice until the rest of the band members arrived.

At that point, Haruki had no idea the torment he had to suffer during his camp. Whenever he was alone, he will always find the same piece of black paper in his file that told him to do something. From turning on the keyboard which caused it to play random notes to looking under the trophy cabinet to find nothing but dust blown onto his face. Haruki eventually stopped following the instructions after a few times.

On the last day of the camp, the piece of black paper will appear in his music file again. This time, it contained more than a single sentence.

* * *

Lanfen Cheng

SHSL Botanist

Age: 16

Birthday: 3rd March

Height: 157cm

Weight: 52kg

It was currently the weekend, which meant that Lanfen will be able to spend more time with her plants in the greenhouse instead of going to the school. In addition, the weekends were usually the days that her cousin will come to visit her and her family. Today was most likely the day he will drop by again.

Lanfen had just come back from the nearby flower store to purchase some flower seeds that were newly imported to the store. As the new additions in her greenhouse, she had quite high hopes for them to fit in well with the rest of her plants.

To her surprise, the person who greeted her was Song Wong, her cousin who had moved away in order to start his high school life in a private school that was located in the city. With black hair dyed purple and his dark blue eyes, he was considered pretty handsome to many others.

After happily greeting Lanfen, Song Wong pushed her from the back towards the living room impatiently as he wanted to catch up with her on what they had both missed during the time he was in the city. During their conversation, Song Wong briefly mentioned that Lanfen's family had a male visitor earlier that day while she was out. Apparently, the visitor wanted to visit her greenhouse due to his interest in plants and he saw it when he was just walking past.

It lifted up Lanfen's spirit when she heard that her greenhouse was being appreciated by others. It was always a pleasant thing to hear that the work you spent so long on was being acknowledged by others and she was no exception to it.

After ending her conversation with Song Wong, who was called over by Lanfen's mother to have a chat with, she immediately went to her greenhouse to plant her newly brought seeds.

However, while she was nearing her greenhouse, the sound of someone crying can be heard, followed by the sound small feet running towards her. The next second she knew, Lanfen was being held tightly by a small body as it made loud sobbing sounds.

It was her younger sister, Luli, who was probably crying about her stolen toys due to the youngest child of the family again. It was usually Lanfen who will comfort her and this time was no different from any other time. She hated to see her sister cry and it would often result in her being teary-eyed as well.

Lanfen patted her sister's head and whispered soft words to her until she was calmed enough to stop her crying. After sending her sister away, who had regained her happiness, Lanfen continued her journey towards her greenhouse once again.

In the greenhouse, thousands of plants can be seen as they gave off a calming aura to the place. Without any distractions, noises and air pollution, this was the exact place to be if there was anyone who wanted to relax. This was precisely the reason why Lanfen liked her greenhouse so much and spent so much time in it.

As she continued to an empty plot of land to plant her seeds in, she noticed a small black thing on the soil, that contained her baptisia plants, when she went past them. Thinking that it was a bug, she moved towards the black thing with the intention to remove it from the soil. However, it was a piece of black paper folded into a crane.

Among all the soil, the single black crane was hard to notice as it blended in with the soil. Bending down to pick up the piece of paper, she unfolded the paper to its original shape. She was greeted with brown wordings with her name right on top of the paper.

She was invited to a virtual reality world where she will be able to change her life. It was a life where she was able to reborn into a whole new person. Someone whom she can be proud of who she is. Indeed, it was truly a Rebirth Point for someone like her.

With widening eyes, Lanfen reread the message, again and again, to make sure that she did not read it wrong, especially when the words were quite hard to decipher. Clutching the letter with both of her hands, she curled in on herself.

"Finally, I can finally be normal again," she softly spoke as silent tears fell from her eyes and dripped onto the tightly gripped letter.

Without a single doubt, she will definitely join the Rebirth Point.

* * *

Andrea Jensen

SHSL TV Host

Age: 18

Birthday: 8th February

Height: 167cm

Weight: 56kg

To the SHSL TV Host, Andrea Jensen

Hello, Andrea Jensen, it will be in your best interest that you continue reading this totally sketchy message.

Let us cut straight to the point and avoid all the useless chit chat, shall we? We have a proposal for you that you will definitely be interested in.

Your current outlook on the world interests us greatly and we wish to give you a chance to make friends who came from different parts of the world. I am very sure you will have so much fun with these potential friends that you will never ever get bored. They are all unique individuals.

Whatever life you live right now will have no meaning if you accept this proposal of ours. As long as you join Rebirth Point, you will be able to have a second chance at life that will be much more exciting than your current one. It will do you well if you just accept this program. It will make my life easier if you just accept the proposal, you don't have anything to lose anyway.

More information can be found at the back of this paper. Just flip to the back.

Best Regards,

Akai

Backstage at a music contest in Denmark

A young lady was walking down a hallway as she smiled brightly and cheerfully every time she greeted anyone she passed by. Heads turned whenever she walked by and whispers of admiration can always be heard. Her name is Andrea Jensen, a popular TV Host since she was young. She had certainly accomplished quite a few feats in the entertainment industry despite her young age.

Pausing in front of a door with her name written on the doorplate, she produced a lone key from her jeans and unlocked the door with it. The door opened to reveal a pure white room with a single table at the far end of the room.

Walking towards her make-up table, Andrea proceeded to sit in front of the mirror and leaned her upper body forward to carefully observe her appearance. The mirror revealed a tired looking face of a gorgeous girl. Despite her obviously exhausted look, Andrea still looked as attractive as ever.

Her reason for her exhaustion was mainly because of her workload. She had been working a lot lately and had little time to neither relax nor have fun with her friends. While being a TV Host was good pay and enabled her to get a large fan base from both genders, it was really tiring for her to work so much every single day. It will be great if she was able to have a change of pace.

Yawning softly, Andrea opened the drawer that contained all of her make-up products to reveal a single envelop sitting on top of her beauty products. The letter sparked her interest as she was quite sure that her room was locked before she left. Picking it up, she noticed that her name was written on the front of the envelope.

She looked in the mirror again and saw her chocolate brown perfect hair. Flipping her hair a little, Andrea ripped up the envelope, not caring if the letter inside got ripped too.

The letter revealed to be of a brown background with green coloured words on it. Reading the letter quickly, Andrea tapped her chin with a single finger as she contemplated about the content in the message.

A new shot at life huh? That was what the letter said. Maybe there were some new kinds of people in there that did not fit into the usual categories. Akai, that was the name of the sender. Yes, she will accept the offer. A chance to meet unique people was exactly what she had in mind.

Turning the paper, Andrea processed the detailed information found there and began to make a few phone calls in preparation for her travel to Japan and her temporary leave in the entertainment industry.

Her fans might get disappointed and her agency will probably be mad at her due to her decision. However, she will deal with them when the time comes. There was no way she was going to let go of this chance given to her. If everything turned out to be a huge disappointment, she can always call it quits anyway.

Ending her last phone call, Andrea looked at the timing on the phone and noticed that she should start on her make-up if she wanted to make it in time for her role as the MC in the music contest. She might as well announce her decision to the world today during the contest.

Throwing away the letter, Andrea reached for her beauty products.

* * *

Tetsuko Ayanokouji

SHSL Transhumanist

Age: 18

Birthday: 12th August

Height: 178cm

Weight: 52kg

Students stared at Tetsuko as she walked past them. To be more accurate, they were staring at what she was carrying. It was a large black duffle bag that seemed to be as wide as, if not wider than, the carrier herself.

Walking with her head held up high, Tetsuko carried a big bag with her left hand as she headed towards her destination. Despite the obvious weight of the bag, she did not have a single problem with carrying the bag at all. In fact, it was like a walk in the park to her. With her fast walking, she was able to reach her destination in no time.

She stopped in front of a light brown door and slid it open. A few feet away were the nameplate of the location of the room.

 _Science lab_

Tetsuko was careful of how she handled the bag as she would not want to damage anything in it. Placing the bag down on the table, she took out a robotic arm after zipping open the bag. It was a prosthetic arm that she wanted to further improve on. Despite the great achievements she had already accomplished due to her work, she continued to improve on her own creations in order to give these prosthetics to people who need them.

Tetsuko's passionate about cybernetics was what allowed her to be so successful. Her strong feelings towards building these prosthetics were what drove her to keep on improving her own creations. At a young age of 18, she was already talented in what she was doing. Her crowning achievement was the development of cybernetics that was keyed to the wearer's genetic code. It was to eliminate the threat of the person's immune system from rejecting the prosthetics, hence, allowing everyone to be able to use her prosthetics if they needed to do so. In addition, it could grow with the user thus negating the need to replace the parts as he or she grew older.

For a long time, only the occasional sound of metal against metal can be heard as she tinkered with the prosthetic arm. Time was ticking away and the sun was slowly setting as Tetsuko continued to work on the arm.

Soon, it was twilight as the setting sun painted a hue of red and orange onto the sky.

 _*Woosh*_

Suddenly, something grazed her cheek lightly as it flew past her before hitting the wall behind her with a loud thud.

A small thin wound appeared on Tetsuko's cheek, causing her to experience a stinging pain. Fortunately, the wound was shallow enough for her to avoid bleeding. Unfortunately, it is precisely due to the shallowness of the wound that it was actually quite painful for Tetsuko.

Rubbing her cheek lightly to at least ease the pain a little, Tetsuko turned back and noticed that an arrow was shot through the open window and was pinned onto the wall. Tied to the back of the arrow was a message of a pure white paper.

In this day and age, there was probably none who will use an arrow to deliver a message. This was either a prank or something that was out of the ordinary.

Tetsuko approached the arrow cautiously just in case it was some type of prank that someone set up for her. Looking around her for any sight of a trap and failed to do so, Tetsuko reached for the arrow and untied the piece of paper on it.

Opening the paper, she was greeted with blood red words that contrast heavily with the pure white background. It was clearly addressed to her as her name was written right at the beginning of the letter. However, the sender seems to be angry or annoyed at something as they were constantly complaining about someone dumping their workload on them.

Despite the ranting of the sender, full details were still given to the recipient as the sender made sure the letter contained all the information needed for the recipient to understand.

In a virtual world that was different from reality, Tetsuko was intrigued by the prospect of what she can accomplish in that kind of world. After all, an opportunity to go into a virtual world does not come by regularly.

It looked like she would need to discuss Rebirth Point with her uncle. For now, she would need to concentrate on finishing her prosthetic arm.

* * *

AN:

After more than 1 month, I have finally updated. I apologise for the long wait, this chapter was actually supposed to come out on last Christmas or latest at New Year. However, something happened at home that deterred me away from finishing this chapter. Good things that need me to be out of house and bad things that made me stay away from being at home as much as possible. Things had calmed down a tiny bit and I want to make use of the calm to update before anything happen again.

Now, enough about me, I have quite a few things to go through in this chapter. Apology right now for the long AN.

1) Regarding the two SHSL mentalists in the previous chapter, it was my fault as the female character is actually SHSL Explorer. Thank you to both ComplicatedYetSimple and TheRoseShadow21 for pointing that mistake out. I appreciate that. I apologise for any confusion I had made for the readers.

2) Now then, five new characters had been introduced in this chapter, how does everyone like them so far? Some of their motives to join Rebirth Point are obvious while others are not. Will you be able to guess what they are? In additon, can the creators of these characters tell me if I had made your OC too OOC?

3) About the introduction of Rhett Greenfield, I have to say that about 90% of that is not written by me. I mainly edited and left out some parts from what the creator, ComplicatedYetSimple, had given me. It was the reason why it was longer than the other introductions as well.

4) Now about the colour of each of the messages that were given to them. Each of them is a different colour, are you able to guess what the colours represent?

5) Regarding the mastermind, I had chosen and it will be for me to know and for all of you to figure it out. I was happy to find a character that has quite the similarity of the motive of this killing game that I had in mind, making all the small hints that I had already given out to be worthwhile. Do note that many of the small hints that existed were real small, mainly because I can just ignore them if I need to change the motive of the killing game if I was unable to get the mastermind I want. More clues will be provided to give you all hints about the real identity and the motive of the mastermind as the story progress. A clue for you all, some of the hints can be found on the submission form itself. That's right, the SYOC form in chapter 1 and my profile.

6) Since many of you would want FTE, I will include them. However, would you like me to choose by myself which characters Kaneo to have FTE with or would you like to make a vote about it? If so, the poll will probably be up when I update the next chapter featuring the rest of the students.

7) Now! The rest of the students! To save you the trouble of going back to chapter 1 to see who have been accepted, I shall post it here as well.

Accepted Characters:

SHSL Acrobat – Masanori Aradai

SHSL Mentalist – Lucien Mercer

SHSL Explorer – Michiko Okazaki

SHSL Commentator – Ikue Kurosawa

SHSL Homeopath – Takako Kawahata

SHSL Street Fighter – Rhett Greenfield

SHSL Tuba Player – Haruki Akiyama

SHSL Botanist – Lanfen Cheng

SHSL TV Host- Andrea Jensen

SHSL Transhumanist – Tetsuko Ayanokouji

SHSL Drama Club Leader – Boniface Hyakushi

SHSL Lucky Student – Kichirou Mutsumi

SHSL Handyman – Atsuya Nijimura

SHSL Paranormal Investigator – Akemi Oshiro

SHSL Historian – Felicity Camille Anastasia Rose Bellisario

The last five characters will be introduced in the next chapter, do look forward to them. If your character is not accepted, please do not be discouraged. They are all wonderful characters and it legit made me have a headache trying to choose who. I choose the characters based on how they complement each other or not complement each other at all. In addition, I had to look at other aspects like the nature of the killing game, the murders I had planned and etc. In fact, some of these characters may not be chosen in the next killing game I had thought up. (Yes, I had more ideas for the next few stories when this story barely started. HELP ME.)

In addition, special thanks to Shouta Izukai, ComplicatedYetSimple, Shyjoker, BlueTanaka, TheRoseShadow21, Sarius909 and Richard Conway for reviewing the story. I really appreciate the reviews and will always look forward to them. I may not reply to some of you because being the socially awkward person that I am, I really do not how to reply. However, do know that I will always be thankful for them.

Anyway, thank you for your support to this story and I hope all of you will continue to do so.

On a side note, due to the fact that I was gone for quite awhile, can any of you recommend any other SYOC fanfic that came out from mid dec last year till now? I am going to be so upset if I miss out any story to send my OC to.


	6. Final Introductions

Chapter 0.3: Final Introductions

Boniface Hyakushi

SHSL Drama Club Leader

Age: 17

Birthday: 26th April

Height: 167cm

Weight: 58kg

 _What a freak._

 _Don't you dare touch me, weirdo!_

 _Have you seen him?_

 _Don't go near him, you may get cursed!_

Opening his shoes locker to retrieve his shoes, Boniface was greeted with a shockingly bright pink envelope resting on top of his shoes. A pink letter in a shoe locker? It was clear what kind of letter that was.

 _Is this a love letter?!_ He internally screamed as the word 'shock' was written all over his face. This will be the first time he had gotten a love letter. He cannot help but be happy and flattered about it even if he was not looking for love.

Trembling with excitement, he pried opened the envelope with shaky hands and pulled out an equally bright pink paper from the envelope. It was definitely addressed to him. However, instead of a message of confession Boniface was expecting, the message told him to meet them at the gym after school.

 _After school…it was way past the meeting time!_ Boniface panicked as re-read the meeting time.

Unfortunately, today just had to be the day where he was the one who needed to clean up the classroom and the club room. This resulted in him unable to get home in his usual timing.

Slamming his shoe locker closed with a loud bang, Boniface dashed off to get to the gym as fast as he can. Embarrassing enough, he was quite slow even when sprinting.

When he finally reached the gym, there was no one there. Not a single living being can be seen in the gym. However, right in the middle of the gym, was a chair. A fanciful chair that was decorated with silk, ribbons, and laces. It did not fit well with the gym at all.

A wooden box was found sitting on the chair. It looked like those typical treasure chests found in any RPG with its brown, gold and red colours. With its shining gold lock and key, it did not fit well with the chair at all. Someone should probably give the guy who set this up some type of theme lessons. Everything was just clashing together.

Unlocking the chest with the provided key, Boniface came face to face with a badly draw map. It was a map of the school building with a red cross on the gym and a treasure chest on the library.

 _A treasure chest that shows another treasure chest location? That is weird._ Boniface took the map out and took a good look at it.

Closing the chest, he walked out of the gym as he studied the map closely to prevent missing any information. Now that he had taken a proper look at the paper, he noticed that there was a small scribble on the top left corner.

Squinting his eyes, he was able to barely make out the tiny word on the corner.

 _Perfect_

It made no sense to Boniface at all, why would the word 'perfect' be on the piece of paper?

Putting the mystery behind him, Boniface had finally arrived at the library. Surprising, the library was not locked as he slid the door open without any resistance.

What greeted Boniface were arrows. Multiple paper arrows that pointed to only one direction. Following the direction pointed out to him, Boniface found out that the arrows were all pointing to one single book. He pulled out the book from its rightful place and inspected the title of the book.

 _The colours called Red and Blue._

It was a title that he had never seen before and the author's name was missing.

The book was black. Both the cover and papers of the book was black. However, the words on the cover and the inside were a weird mixture of blue and brown. Certainly not what a typical book would look like.

Instead of some type of story in the book, Boniface was surprised that it contained a message to him. There was no doubt in his mind that it was for him as his full name was printed on the very top of the first page of the book.

Reading the message, he realised he had been invited to some kind of program that will be able to help him in his problem.

 _If I go, my left eye…_ Covering his left eye with his left hand, Boniface pondered about the possibilities he could have if he accepts the offer.

 _A chance for him to be normal._

 _A chance for him to change._

 _A chance for him to finally fit in._

Looks like the number of students attending Rebirth Point had just gone up by one.

* * *

Kichirou Mutsumi

SHSL Lucky Student

Age: 18

Birthday: 19th April

Height: 184cm

Weight: 58kg

To the SHSL Luck, Kichirou Mutsumi

Lookie here~ what do we have? A sweet once in a lifetime deal! You may applaud now! Go on, applaud for me!

No, wait! Don't throw this away! It's a good one, I promise! You will regret it if you stop reading now!

Have you lived a life full of regret, running from place to place to escape something? Would you wish that you could live a life with neither any worries nor fear?

Well, you're not the only one!

We would like to offer you a new chance to start life anew. Say goodbye to the old reality as you know it and bask in the glory of your newfound one we can offer.

Don't worry, you do not need to pay us any money at all. Joining us will be the only thing that we asked of you.

Best of luck, not as if YOU need it.

From the greatest creature of all universes, Aoi

P.S. Because of a certain someone who will NOT talk my ears off, the details can be found at the back. She is no fun at all.

Kichicrou smirked, some would say arrogantly, and divided his chips into three columns. One, he placed on black, the second on odd and the third on 19 to 36.

The moment he placed his bet, the spectators had a mixture of reactions. Some watched in awe while others groaned and called him an imbecile for throwing all of his money away on such a stupid gamble. He ignored them all but did not tune them out. Their pathetic cries were music to his ears.

He will show them all with his ability.

Slowly, the ball came to a complete stop. With all eyes on it, the ball proudly displayed the number that was plastered on it.

It was a black ball with a number 23. Black, odd and within the range of 19 to 36.

"We have a lucky winner!" yelled the man behind the counter as the spectators gaped in disbelief.

Soon, the crowd went wild, forgetting about their former pathetic comments as Kichirou took his now bigger stack of chips. He had had enough of this, it was high time for him to escape the casino. He moved away from the table and went to trade his chips in for cash.

With his new stack of dosh in hand, he made his way to the door when something caught his eyes. Immediately, he ducked behind a crowd of people and tried to stay as unnoticeable as possible. In a distance away was a group of suspicious looking men in suits. The bulge in every single one of their suits suggested that they carried weapons, most likely guns, with them.

It was the Yakuza. He owed them big time, he had already taken a dangerous gamble by coming this close to one of their establishments. Skillfully, he ducked behind pillars and people as he moved towards the door. Just as he was about to leave, a man in a butler uniform stopped him.

"Kichirou-san, a letter has been delivered addressing to you." The butler bowed as he brought forth a silver tray that contains a single black, green and red envelope on it. It resembled a roulette table. A perfect envelope for someone like him.

 _A letter for me in this kind of place? Suspicious._

Warily, Kichirou took the letter and pocketed it. He will deal with the letter later, he had bigger problems to do right now.

Looking behind him, he noticed that the Yakuza had not seen him. _Yet._

He shrugged, "Good luck, I guess." _As always,_ he mused to himself.

To avoid being detected by the Yakuza, Kichirou tried to blend in with that the background as best as he could as he made his way out of the casino to head for his home.

Kicking the front door of his house open, he collapsed on his couch and pulled out the envelope he received earlier from his pocket. Inside the safety of his own apartment, he will be able to fully take in the contents found inside the letter. As he unsealed the envelope, a single piece of pale yellow paper was found. On the paper, words of green can be seen.

The more he read the letter, the wider his smile became. "Life just got a whole lot more interesting." Kichirou laughed as he placed the paper back into the envelope.

Placing the opened letter on his cupboard, he retreated to his bedroom for the night.

Kichirou Mutsumi, the SHSL Luck, was given the right opportunity at the right time. Or so he thought anyway.

* * *

Atsuya Nijimura

SHSL Handyman

Age: 17

Birthday: 6th July

Height: 167cm

Weight: 54kg

To the SHSL Handyman, Atsuya Nijimura,

Hello there! I hope I surprised you with this little message and if not, then make sure to read on~.

Have you lived a life torn by society's thorns, or perhaps one filled to the brim with overwhelming self-confidence? A life of little to no decisions or one with too many? Whatever the case, I implore you to join us for a chance for a new you!

Whatever ailment that may plague you can and will be cured with a visit to Rebirth Point! Become what you could never be and much more.

It will be a once in a lifetime chance! If you reject this offer, you will never get it again! Think wisely before making your decision. See you soon!

From the most gorgeous creature in the entire galaxy; Aoi~

Atsuya was walking back to his house from his job when a man dressed in a suit approached him with a black laptop on hand. The man stopped Atsuya from continuing his way as he greeted him with a smile.

"Hey buddy, do you mind helping a brother to fix his laptop?" The man pleaded to Atsuya while presenting a black laptop to him. "I need it urgently for my work and it will be real swell if you are able to fix this baby up for me."

"Sure sure, what did ya got for me?" Atsuya agreed as he took the laptop from the man before checking the external of the laptop to see if he can spot any problem. At that point of time, Atsuya did not notice how weird it was for some random person to stop him and specifically ask him to help to fix his laptop especially when he had never seen the man before.

"Thanks a bunch brother! It just will not start up properly. It has been giving me a real headache." The man grinned as he gave a hearty slap to Atsuya's back.

"No problem man, have to give out a helpin' hand to someone who needs it ya know? 's my job. Just…don't do that again." Atsuya replied to the man while rubbing the area where the man had slapped was a possibility that a bruise may form there the next day.

"Thanks so much buddy, I will just stand here to wait for you to finish." Said the man as he proceeded to stand to a side to let Atsuya have the room to fix his laptop.

Atsuya nodded to acknowledge the words of the man before taking out his tools that he carried with him to start his work on fixing the laptop. He was concentrating so hard on his job that he did not realised the man had slipped away as soon as he could. It was only when he finished fixing up the laptop did he looked up to return the laptop and noticed the man was nowhere in sight.

Standing up and looking left and right, Atsuya failed to locate the man in the nearby surrounding. It was at that time that a text file opened up on the computer all by itself.

Unlike the usual black and white text file that was found on the computer, the background was of an orange colour and the words was a mixture of brown and green. It was certainly weird as a text file was not supposed to have these kinds of functions at all.

Atsuya closed the laptop and tucked it under his arm. He would read the message when he reached home as the place he was currently at was not the best place to read a message.

Once he was back at his home, Atsuya switched on the laptop to investigate the message in a clear detail. It was a message addressed to him from someone named Aoi. A person who he had never heard or seen before.

 _Rebirth Point? Will someone really join this kind of project?_ Atsuya wondered the instant he finished reading the whole message.

The messages hinted highly on the distress of the receivers of such messages and Atsuya could not help but be worried about it. He wondered if there were really people who had such a hard time in their life that they would want to run away from their life by accepting the offer to join this program. While he did not have the best history around, he was still able to pull through it.

 _If there's a way for me to help, I will do it. After all, that's what a handyman's for._ Atsuya promised to himself as he closed the laptop before placing it on his desktop.

* * *

Akemi Oshiro

SHSL Paranormal Investigator

Age: 17

Birthday: 19th January

Height: 173cm

Weight: 50kg

Dusk had come and passed, bringing the world into darkness. Yet, streetlights light up the streets with their brilliant light and families started to turn on their house lights. The town that was bathed with darkness lit up once again.

In a house that just radiated with energy, lived a family of three. Laughter can be heard coming from the house as the inhabitants of the house converse with each other pleasantly over dinner. There was only one word to describe this kind of atmosphere.

 _Warmth. Pure warmth._

That place was the definition of a safe and happy house that everyone would love to go home to after a hard day of work. While the house was a great haven, it cannot be said about the places the youngest of the family had visited in pursuit of her passion. It will be a shame if something dreadful happened to any of the residents living there.

As time passes and the night grew darker and colder, Akemi's parents retired for the night while she went to her room to use her computer. Hoping to find any hint of supernatural sightings that she had not heard of, Akemi continued her search even though it was already late at night.

She was in the middle of her research when a pop-up covered her whole screen even though she neither pressed nor clicked anything. On the pop-up, there was only a single website link without anything else on it. Curious about it, Akemi clicked on that website which directed her to a forum.

On that forum, multiple messages can be seen and they were all discussing a topic. While it was a common thing to see people having a conversation in a forum, what was strange about that forum was that everything single messages were made by the same person. It was a single person with the username; why-am-I-doing-this.

As Akemi scrolled through the messages in the forum, she found another link to a website. She clicked on it and was anxious to know the content that was waiting for her on the next website.

It was a video, a video of a dancing wolf and a disgruntled fox sitting at the corner. Needless to say, the wolf was really bad at his dancing. So bad that even a child can probably dance better than him.

 _This is interesting. It was like a scavenger hunt, only that it was virtual._ Akemi thought to herself as she sat through the whole video, wanting to see the end rewards of this scavenger hunt. Who knows, maybe it will be an extraordinary gift. A gift unlike any other.

The moment she got to the end of the video, she received a notification about a new message she had just received in her email inbox. Logging in to her email, she clicked on the newest mail she had received.

The instant she clicked on the mail, her screen suddenly turned black. Frowning, Akemi randomly clicked her mouse a few times and typed random letters using her keyboard, hoping to start up her computer again. When all failed, she tried pressing the on/off button of her computer but to no avail.

As she was about to get out of her chair to turn off the power supply, the computer suddenly turned back on by itself again. However, the colours of the image projected on the screen turned out wrong. The background was a pale yellow and all of the wordings were of a grayish colour.

Despite the weird colouring of the screen, Akemi was able to make out the message that was sent to her. It was a message that was unlike any other she had received before. It certainly stands out from the rest of the emails she received due to the fact that she had to go through quite a bit of effort to get that message.

She was already into it just from the virtual scavenger hunt she had just been led on, so, it did not take much more to pique her curiosity. With something that was offering her to be somewhere that was totally different from where she lived, it was intriguing to her.

In addition, it was kind of scary how everything played out. Exactly her type of fun.

Smiling from ear to ear, she closed all the tabs from her internet and switched off her computer. After all, there was no need for her to continue researching. In fact, she would need to prepare for her next expedition.

Somewhere, the hissing of a cat can be heard.

Suddenly, it stopped.

There was absolutely no sound.

Silence was what greeted the neighbourhood.

It was…

 _Unnatural._

* * *

Felicity Camille Anastasia Rose Bellisario

SHSL Historian

Age: 17

Birthday: 15th March

Height: 157cm

Weight: 54kg

Felicity was in her study where she spent most of her time in. It was a place where she pursued her passion for history as she surrounded herself with various objects about and from the ancient times. In fact, this was the place where she had solve many of the history's most complex mysteries.

Her study was like a huge library that was full of all her researches, materials, artifacts, old journals and things of that nature. A person seeking knowledge would drool at the sight of how much they can learn just from the amount of materials in that one single room.

Right at the center of the room, there was a big oak desk with random books and papers that can be found on top of it. A big swivel chair stood behind the desk and it was where she often sat to read her documents.

If someone were to step into the room for the first time, they may be taken aback by how messy the whole place was. Papers were strewn about, a stone tablet here and there and tools were placed haphazardly. Piles and piles of papers can be found everywhere in the room and a small push from someone will send them toppling. At first glance, the room seems to be very chaotic with not a single thing organised properly. However, the whole room was pretty much organised chaos and Felicity will be able to find what she wants easily.

Oddly enough, while the books seemed to be placed at random places like the table, on top of the bookshelves and even on chairs, they cannot be found anywhere on the floor. It may be hard to notice with all those messes around but most, if not all, of the books, were in great and working condition. The owners of these books must have taken great care in preserving the condition of these books.

Sitting on her swivel chair, Felicity flipped through an ancient book as she tried to decipher the meaning behind the content in the book. It had been days since she started deciphering this book and she was just about to finish it. However, at the exact moment that she was about to finish deciphering the book, there was a knock at the door.

Felicity placed her book down and got up from her seat to get the door. As she opened her door, it revealed to be an oddly dressed male. The male was wearing a typical suit for the top of his body. However, instead of normal formal pants, the man seemed to be using some type of cloth to cover his lower body. It was unknown to Felicity if that was the dressing style of the man or he had somehow lost his pants somewhere.

Upon seeing the man, Felicity stepped back cautiously and was careful to not get too close to the man. Stranger danger, especially when the other person was wearing weirdly. It will be best to not get close to the man at all.

The man did not say anything and only held up a scroll to Felicity. Nodding at the scroll that he was holding, he motioned for Felicity to take it. The serious expression on his face did not match with his choice of clothing at all.

Still keeping an eye out for any danger, Felicity took the scroll before promptly closing the door on the man. It will do her good to avoid the man completely. In addition, the whole exchange was completely eerie with how both of them did not speak a single word to each other.

Going back to her table, Felicity studied the scroll closely. It was a silver scroll with a dark purple ribbon skillfully tied around it. Pulling one end of the ribbon, Felicity successfully untied the ribbon from the scroll and rolled the scroll open.

What greeted her was a message addressed to her by a person named Akai. The words found on the scroll were the same colour as the ribbon that was used to tie the scroll.

As Felicity read the message that was addressed to her, she was very exited in knowing that she was invited to a whole new world where she will be able to get firsthand experience on an event that will go down in history.

"…This…will be interesting." Felicity commented to herself as tied the scroll again with the purple ribbon before putting it away in her drawer.

She reached for her previously abandoned book and continued on her attempt at deciphering the contents.

* * *

Bonus:

"Poor kids will never know what's hitting them huh? I reckon they will start panicking when shit hits the fan. "A man in suit mumbled to himself as he took a ride back to his work to continue his job. "Why am I stuck in this kind of job anyway? Shitty boss and shitty situations, I even lost my pants due to that stupid wolf and was treated as some type of pervert because of it."

A phone rang and the man took his phone out of his pocket. Looking at the caller ID, the man was sure he will not enjoy the conversation with the caller. Speak of the devil and the devil shall come. He should probably start to be careful of who he was going to badmouth in the future.

Pressing the button to accept the call, the man held his phone to his left ear.

"Hey hey hey! Are you done with delivering the message? I need you to continue delivering the next messages you know. Seriously, it was all your fault that I am suffering so much right now you know. Pick up the speed and Akai will stop talking my ears off. You will not want to see my totally awesome ears fell off." After finishing what he had to said, the caller immediately ended the call.

Ending the call, the man gave a loud sigh as he contemplated changing his job. "Really, why am I still doing this job?"

* * *

 _16 students and a killing game, it might not go too swimmingly huh?_

 _It is a dreadful situation to be in; I am not going to lie about that._

 _The only way out of this situation is to not kill or be killed. Something as simple as that, I am afraid we may fail to do so._

 _Everyone joined this program for a reason but we were unknowingly dragged into such a situation._

 _However, we are the ones who agreed to this. Who are we to blame, but ourselves?_

 _Maybe...just maybe…there is a chance for us in this world._

 _After all, everything will be fine. I am sure of it._

.

 _In this world where unfairness is everywhere, just where do we go to receive the right we deserve?_

 _For what actions have I – no, we – did to deserve such cruel fate?_

 _We have done nothing wrong and we were abandoned by the world._

 _We just wanted to live, is that too hard to ask for?_

 _We cared and we listened. Yet, it was never enough._

 _We helped and we saved. Yet, who will be the one to save us?_

 _No one. That is why, we will save ourselves._

.

 _Hmm~ Another one fallen to my words._

 _Same old, same old._

 _Really, these people are just **so** gullible._

 _It is pretty tiring when everyone is just so predictable._

 _Maybe I should decrease the difficulty for them just a tiny bit._

 _Hopefully, the new group of people will prove to be a better entertainment._

 _See you soon, my fellow **F.R.I.E.N.D.S.**_

* * *

AN:

Here is another new chapter for all of you! Finally, we finished the 1st introductions for everyone that were going to participate in Rebirth Point. The next chapter will be featuring everyone with Kaneo meeting them. Do look forward to that! However, depending on the length of the next chapter, I may split it up.

Okay, time to go through things.

1) So, we had the final 5 members of our participations. Who do you like the most out of these 5? Did any of you change your favourite character after the introduction of this chapter?

2) Once again, can the creators of these characters tell me how I wrote them? Some comments will be nice.

3) Now, I felt obligated to say this as well. About the introduction of Kichirou Mutsumi, the SHSL Lucky Student, about 60% of that was not written by me. It was given to me by his creator, Richard Conway.

4) Regarding the FTEs, I will be putting up a poll instead of choosing myself since most would prefer to vote. However, it will only be up when the next chapter/chapters came up that features the main introductions of everyone. In this way, you will get to know more about the characters and probably change your favourite along the way.

5) At the end of this chapter, you may have noticed 3 sections in all italics. They are the thoughts of some of the characters in this story. It was obvious who the first one is(If you are paying attention to this story). The other two… well, only me and probably the creator of those characters knew exactly who they are. Have fun guessing the identity of them.

6) Now, about the italics section, I will write out someone's thoughts about something at the end of every chapter (even if they died in the game). This chapter featured three of them as a way of me apologising for the late update for the previous chapter. Of course, will they give you a clue of the identity of the mastermind and what is their motive? Absolutely. Yes. Positive. Hai. Sì. Oui. Ja. Shì . However, you have to guess yourself which one is the thoughts of the mastermind.

Did anyone hate it and do not want me to do this and I should let it burn in hell where it belongs?

7) If there is anyone who wants a hint of the identity of the mastermind or their motive, feel free to either put it in the review or PM me.

Special thanks to ShyJoker, ComplicatedYetSimple, TheRoseShadow21, BlueTanaka, Sarius909, tobi-is-an-artist-too, Shouta Izukai and Vixo for reviewing the last chapter. Love you all!

P.S. Please don't be like Akemi and clicked some random suspicious website link. The only thing you are probably going to get is a virus. Additionally, does everyone just follow whatever some suspicious letter tells you to do too? I would either throw it away or ignored it. Seriously, don't do such things, it will only end badly for you. Surviving 101 for you all. You're welcome.


	7. The Beginning of The End

Chapter 1.1: The Beginning of The End

 _What is The End and what is The Beginning._

 _People often say The End is just another Beginning. Is that true?_

 _Not always, The End can mean The Actual End for many others._

 _The Beginning can be The End too, just that no one realises it._

 _Just like this story, we are already one step closer to The End._

 _This is The Beginning of The End._

* * *

As Kaneo exited the shrine, he headed back towards the bridge with the dark blue railings that will eventually lead him into the park. As always, the silhouettes can be seen no matter where he went and Kaneo was getting pretty sick of them blocking his line of sight.

When he walked passed and through all the silhouettes, he accidentally bumped into someone in the middle of the bridge.

It was a girl with green eyes and long black hair stringed with a ponytail behind her back. Her face had some marks of scratches and slight scars on her face, indicating that she suffered from some wounds before. She had a slender and feminine build, with a chest that was slight bustier than an average person. She was wearing a white buttoned shirt with a purple tie, black pants, and hiking shoes. Hanging behind her back was a sun blocking beige hat. A simple silver necklace that has no pendant in it hung around her neck.

Apologising for his mistake, Kaneo took his chance to introduce himself. This girl will be the first person he met since he got to this world and giving a good first impression would be important.

"Yo, I'm Michiko, the SHSL Explorer. Nice to meet ya," Michiko grinned as she held up a hand for Kaneo to shake, "Also, don't you worry about bumping into me, it was hard to see anyone with these red and blue people around."

Giving his hand for the handshake, Kaneo proposed the idea for them to go to the crystal together which Michiko agreed on. Conversations broke out between the both of them as they walked into the park.

"Hey, you looked like you need some muscle on your body!" Michiko exclaimed out loud, "It won't be good for you to be so weak especially when you are a guy you know? How about we go for some training after all this?"

"N-N-No thank you," Kaneo nervously stuttered out his reply, "I am sure I will not be able to complete it."

 _Forget completing it, I may not even survive at the end of it._

With a strength that almost made Kaneo fall flat on the ground – for the third time that day – again, Michiko gave a huge thump to his back as she encouraged him to go with her idea. The more ideas she came up with, the more Kaneo panic internally.

Trying desperately to direct Michiko's attention to something else – to avoid days of muscle pains – Kaneo looked around him for a change of topic. What saved him from undoubtedly a harsh training came in a form of a petite girl.

Quickly, Kaneo pointed out the new girl to Michiko and grabbed her hand before pulling her towards the new girl. The girl was looking left and right while trying to avoid any contact with any of the silhouettes. However, her steps seemed to be unsteady as she moved about and it looked like she was going to fall any second with how she carried herself. Seeing this, Michiko immediately broke free from Kaneo's hold and rushed over to the girl to steady her.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Kaneo approached the two girls and studied the appearance of the new girl.

The girl had a small, petite build without a single muscle on her. With her green eyes and round face, she was clearly cute. The girl has a long and straight lavender hair with her bangs being swept to the right. A small bun was found on the left side of her head with the rest of her hair was down. A flower of some kind was placed in her hair to complete her look. A mole can be found on her left cheekbone.

She wore a loose white lacy top with sleeves reaching her elbows and a long off-white skirt with a pastel floral pattern to complement it. Brown cowboy boots with a thick leather belt finish off her outfit. However, both of the skirt and blouse were covered in dirt and grass stains.

"Thank you for your help." The flowery girl thanked Michiko warmly with a soft voice, "I would have fallen there if you did not stand in to help me."

"Not a problem! Why were you walking so weirdly anyway?" Michiko tilted her head.

"I am just simply not used to walking yet, I may need some time to get used to it."

"Not used to it?" Michiko asked in confusion as she stared at the flowery girl.

The flowery girl grew quiet as she fidgeted nervously at where she stood. Gripping her skirt tightly with both hands, words failed her as she stood there. Seeing how uncomfortable the girl was, Kaneo interrupted their conversation to change the subject by introducing himself. Not wanting to make the girl more uncomfortable than she already was, Michiko followed Kaneo's lead and told the girl her name as well.

"It's a pleasure to meet you both! My name is Lanfen, written with the characters for orchid and fragrant." Lanfen smiled at the both of them as she introduced herself. Two small dimples can be seen on both sides of her cheeks as she smiled.

"Have you seen anyone on your way here?" Kaneo asked her, hoping to at least introduce himself to more people.

"I did," nodding her head, Lanfen pointed towards the park, "Two girls were arguing with each other while walking towards the center of the park. I was going to try and break the argument up but they were too fast for me to catch up." With a look of concern, Lanfen looked towards the direction the girls went to.

With the idea that they should meet up with the rest and ease Lanfen's worries about the two female students, all three of them walked towards the crystal. However, due to Lanfen's state, they were unable to move very quickly. The trio finally reached the crystal that was located right in the middle of the park and scattering around the crystal was 12 teenagers about the same age as them. Weirdly enough, all of the surrounding silhouettes avoided everyone who was standing near the crystal. This resulted in a big empty circle with the crystal in the middle.

As the trio got nearer to the crystal, what greeted them was not a person, but a fat orange tabby cat that came meowing to them. Unlike the typical impression of a cat being unfriendly to strangers, this cat seems to love to get to know more about the trio as it rubbed its body against their legs every time it walked between their legs.

Michiko tensed up and stared intently at the cat as it brushed against her legs. She stood rooted to the ground with her hands balled into tight fists. Looking at this scene, Kaneo can't help but wondered if Michiko dislikes cats. He thought that he should probably lead the cat away from her but he was not someone who was good with small animals as well/.

On the other hand, Lanfen had the opposite reaction as compared to Michiko. With a soft squeak, she crouched down and started to pet the cat with all her might.

"Cat!? Where did you run off to!?" A smooth voice called out desperately from somewhere to their right.

 _Cat?_ Kaneo glanced at the orange cat that just paid a visit to the three of them. _Don't tell me…_

The person who came running to the trio has black hair with purple streaks in his bangs, which were swept to the left and kept out of his face with hairpins. His hair was of relatively average length, reaching the nape of his neck.

It was hard to see his build with the sweatshirt he was wearing. In addition to his sweatshirt, he seemed to be wearing some kind of purple shirt with long sleeves. He also wore a pair of blue shorts that reached just past his knees and a black, stretchy, form-fitting tights that had a white design running up his left leg and the left side of it reminiscent of leaves. He has on black boots with untied laces.

Noticing the cat was with the trio, the male called loudly to the cat again as he started running towards the three of them. Kaneo can't help but noticed that the approaching male did run pretty fast.

Looking at the new person, who was presumably the owner of the small animal, the cat left the trio and went running towards the male. Scooping the cat up and held it in his arms, the new person came forward to greet the trio.

"Yo, nice to meet ya! I'm Masa! Thanks for helping me find Cat." Masa greeted the trio energetically with a blinding smile once his bluish-gray eyes landed on three of them.

"Is that your cat? It's so cute! Don't you think so Michiko?"

"Yeah…the cat is cute." Michiko reluctantly agreed with Lanfen as she looked at everywhere but the cat itself.

"Masa, what is your talent? I believe you failed to tell us that little part about yourself." Kaneo reminded him.

"Is that so? I guess I forgot to mention it in my excitement." Masa laughed carefreely as he clasped his hands behind his head, "I am the SHSL Acrobat and speaking of introductions, you three did not introduce yourselves you know?"

Realization crossed their features and the three hurriedly introduced themselves. In the midst of their late introductions, Masa laughed heartily at their antics. Hearing his laughter, Kaneo relaxed his shoulders that he did not know had been tensed up the whole time he was in the stimulation. It seems as if having Masa around was able to blow some of his uneasiness away.

With Masa's easy-going attitude, he became part of the team quickly and even managed to convince Michiko to hold his cat. Michiko was reluctant at first and seems to be struggling internally with herself when Cat was presented to her. However, with Masa's persistent and his never-ending cheerfulness, Michiko agreed. They were unable to read her expression as she buried her face into Cat's fur the moment she took Cat into her arms.

With Michiko and Lanfen being preoccupied with Cat, Kaneo strikes up a conversation with Masa and eventually asked him for a demonstration of his talent. Upon hearing the request, Masa eagerly did a quick stretch to prevent getting any sore muscles or injuring himself before moving to stand a distance away from Kaneo.

With a grin, Masa started running and once he gained enough speed, he began to cartwheel with perfect form. With just a slip second of pause, he leaped into the air with a powerful jump before twisting his whole body 360 degrees for three times. With a brilliant frontflip, Masa landed perfectly as he gave one final pose.

Kaneo was awestruck by Masa's display and begun clapping and gave his compliments. However, Masa was not done with his demonstration. He laid down on the floor on his stomach, Masa bent his upper body backward to the point that he was facing directly to the sky. Grabbing both of his legs with his hands, Masa playfully rocked his body front and back without breaking a sweat. After that, he continued to do a series of demonstrations that showed case his amazing flexibility as he twisted and turned his body in seemingly inhuman positions.

It honestly scared Kaneo a tiny bit by how flexible Masa was.

Masa's short performance was interrupted by the call of Masa's name from Michiko which Masa gave a loud reply before running towards them.

Figuring that he should introduce himself to another person, Kaneo left Michiko, Lanfen, Masa and Cat after saying his farewells to them all. The nearest person to him was a tall and skinny male who was standing right in front of the crystal while back-facing Kaneo. Tapping the guy's right shoulder, Kaneo gave a small hello even before the male teenager turn fully to face him.

As the male turned to face Kaneo, the first thing he noticed was not that guy's appearance but that his tie pin with the luck kanji on it. Due to being a designer, he would always notice the small details first before looking at the big picture. While it was not really a bad thing, that characteristics of his did create some trouble for him.

Pulling his eyes away from the small tie pin, Kaneo took a good look at the guy's appearance.

The male had green eyes and golden blonde hair that poked out of his black fedora. Due to the fedora hiding most his hair, Kaneo was only able to determine that the male had curly hair from what amount of hair that can be seen. He was wearing a black vest with gray stripes with a light blue dress shirt and blood-red tie underneath it. On the outside, he wore a funeral style black coat that was left unbuttoned, black slacks pants and brown court shoes. Some type of chain hung from one of his pants belt loop and into his pocket.

"Huh, you're talking to me? Erm… Well, I'm Kichirou Mutsumi, SHSL Lucky Student. Yeah, shitty skill, I know. I hope that our future meetings won't have us both at either side of a blade, eh?" Clearly, Kichirou did not like Kaneo that much. It made Kaneo wonder if he unconsiously did something wrong and made such a bad impression.

"It is certainly unique and don't worry about me pointing a knife at you," Kaneo smiled sheepishly as he explained, "I will most likely hurt myself first than hurting you."

"Yeah, yeah. Who are you anyways? It was real rude of you to start talking to me without even telling me your name. From the looks of things, it seemed like we will not get along at all." Kichirou looked at Kaneo with furrowed brows.

"I am Kaneo Nanasaki, the SHSL Designer."

"Designer? Like, designer of what? Curtains, tablecloths, what? Or are you more of an architect type person? Cuz I mean, what the fuck is your talent specifically? Are you just really good at drawing? Are you the new Goethe or something?" Kichirou scowled at Kaneo

"I specialized more on the designing of the interior and exterior of buildings. However, other aspects of designing are fine for me as well."

"Other aspects are fine as well you say? Hey, if ya wanna be useful, why don't you design me a new throwing card pattern?"

Not finding any fault in helping out another person, Kaneo agreed to Kichirou's request. However, instead of a word of gratitude that Kaneo was expecting, Kichirou gave him a weird look.

 _Huh? Did I say something weird?_

However, before Kaneo was able to confirm his thoughts with Kichirou, he was interrupted by the appearance of 2 animals. A wolf and a fox.

While Kaneo recognized the wolf as Aoi, he had never met the fox before.

The fox was about 47 cm ( 1'6.7") in length. The fox had blue fur covering most of its body while white fur covered its underbody. Standing beside Aoi, the fox looked tiny in comparison. A stern expression can be found on her face and Kaneo shivered uncontrollably when he met the eyes of the fox.

"My name is Akai and this one," Akai lifted one of her paws and pointed it towards Aoi, "is Aoi. That's all you need to know about us."

 _The person who named them really needs to have their eyes checked and their colours right._ Kaneo sighed quietly and massaged his temples. He could just feel a headache coming already.

"How rude! I am certainly not 'this one'! How can you address an eminent being such as myself in that way?" Aoi huffed angrily at Akai.

"There is still one person missing, we will need to wait for him before we can explain your life here."

Like a child, Aoi pounded his paw on the floor when Akai ignored him.

Seconds passed and minutes passed. The person that Akai mentioned did not arrive at all and the rest were getting restless from standing around and doing nothing.

"Sorry, sorry. I got lost. The place is too big for me." A girlish voice cut through the growing noises of the participators as most were getting annoyed with the late comer.

Despite the girly voice, the owner of said voice was actually a male. With long waist-deep white-silver hair that had many strands sticking up and bright purple eyes, he had a skinny yet slightly athletic body. He wore a knee-long black hoodie that was unzipped showing the purple t-shirt he wore inside. A pair of purple jeans and black running shoes complete his look.

"Lucien Mercer, if you want to survive in this world, I suggest you pay close attention to the upcoming rules." Akai twitched her ears in irritation.

"Rules?" A number of students echoed Akai's words as they caught on the threat that was given to Lucien and probably to themselves as well.

"That's right! Even for a killing game, there must be some rules enforced to prevent unfairness right? We can't have you guys start killing each other out of nowhere without any meaning right? It's not what they want." Without any warning, Aoi declared proudly the reason for their purpose in Rebirth Point, leaving the teenagers feeling confused and apprehensive.

"Hold on, wait a moment. Where's the parking lot, because I have a feeling we're all gonna need to take a stop there." Kichirou voiced what everyone was thinking about, "Why are we supposed to kill each other? I thought this was supposed to be a project, a new life for all of us. The fuck happened to that?"

The announcement was too sudden and many of the participants were unable to comprehend the situation at that point of time. Everyone was in a state of confusion and wariness.

"Telling a bad joke like this is not very funny-ny-ny." A tall and thin girl with white long hair that was tied into a low ponytail spoke out.

"That's right! This is definitely a joke. There is no way this will happen in real life. "A red-haired male with colourful earrings on both of his ears shouted.

"I know! This is a prank, right? Where are the hidden cameras trying to capture our reactions?" A girl who was wearing a t-shirt with an image of an alien on her shirt adjusted her big round glasses as she peered around her, presumably trying to locate any cameras. However, she failed to locate any of the said cameras.

"Ah! Perhaps this is a new TV show? That's weird, I don't hear anything about such a show coming out, they will usually inform me of it." The owner of the energetic voice but with a hint of childish in it was a girl who wore different braided bracelets of different colors on her left wrist.

"No, this isn't a joke... My gut tells and it rarely went wrong." A masked male mumbled to himself as he nervously adjusted the mask that covered his upper face.

"I assured you, this is not a joke. You will put your life in this to let _that_ person achieve their goals."

"That person? Who are ya talkin' about?" A male wearing a blue cap, that had a little wrench icon in the middle of it, asked Akai.

"Who else? Our Creator!" Aoi answered matter-of-factly.

"Creator?" Came the question to Aoi's statement.

"We are not dumb enough to give you any information of the Creator. The only thing you all need to do is to kill someone." With her head turned upwards, it looked as if Akai was looking down at the humans.

"I will not tolerate this action! What gives you the right to play with our lives like this?" A black haired girl spoke with authority as she looked at both Aoi and Akai with unwavering eyes.

"Is that so? It's not like you can do anything to us, Takako. All of you are the ones who agreed to come to Rebirth Point, we did not force you to participate."

"We came for a new life and this is _totally_ what we all wanted." A girl with black scruffy hair spoke in a deadpan voice.

"Ahahaha~ All of you are so cute. Really, what are you going to do? Sue us? Find yourself a lawyer and we can talk after that. Assuming that it will even work in the first place." Aoi grinned at everyone as he mocked them.

At Aoi's statement, voices of anger and irritation can be heard from the participants.

"Notice the metal strap around your left wrist?" Aoi went on to the next subject while ignoring everyone, "It's called the menu, awesome right?"

The jumping of subjects to subjects without any warning was kind of causing the participants to be dizzy.

"What he was trying to say was that these will certainly be of used to all of you," Akai explained with a sigh, " it contained things like the maps of Rebirth Point, details of your fellow students, rules of this world and others. It will be best for you all to read up the rules before doing anything and explore the rest of the features in the near future."

"Yupe! You don't want to end up dead just because you broke some rules! Those rules applied right now you know?" Aoi giggled as he swayed his tail to and fro with excitement.

Shock and surprise were evident on everyone's faces as they hurriedly try to turn on the metal strap quickly. None of them wished to accidentally break any rules and end up dying due to their small mistake. Even if they do not fully believe the two animals, it was always better to be safe than sorry.

Just like the others, Kaneo tried to turn on the device as well. Tapping the metal twice, the metal strap lit up with a strange blue light before projecting an image. Along with a full body version of himself, the image showed detailed information about Kaneo as well. Not only does it show his physical information, it also showed his interests, dislikes and even his past.

Ignoring how weird it was for his detailed information to be shown to him, Kaneo tapped on the tab with the word 'Rules' on it.

* * *

 **Rules**

 **Rule 1** : Students may reside only within Rebirth Point. Leaving stimulation is an unacceptable use of time.

 **Rule 2** : "Nighttime" is from 10 pm to 7 am. Some areas are off-limits at night, so please exercise caution.

 **Rule 3** : Most of the silhouette will cease their activities during Nighttime. Students are not allowed to purposefully change their routines.

 **Rule 4** : With minimal restrictions, you are free to explore Rebirth Point at your discretion.

 **Rule 5** : Violence against the GMs, Aoi, and Akai, are strictly prohibited.

 **Rule 6** : Anyone who killed a fellow participant will be able to leave unless they are discovered during the class trial.

 **Rule 7** : School regulations may be edited and added if necessary.

* * *

A chill ran down the students' spines as they read the rules. These rules spelled nothing but trouble for them and fear spread throughout the students as they thought about what might happen to them in this stimulation. While some of the rules seemed innocence, none of them were gullible enough to believe that these rules will help them better enhance their stay there.

"Be sure you don't break these rules, if you do, it will be a visit to the graveyard for you." With unnatural glowing red eyes, Akai looked at each participant in their eyes without blinking. Fear crept up to each of them the moment they locked their eyes with Akai. "This may be a virtual world, but you will still die in the real world if you die here."

The threat was obvious and it left the participants in fear of what will may be in stored for them in the near future.

"W-why… would you want us… to do something… so barbaric?" A girl with silver thin-rimmed glasses that compliments her silver hair spoke with pauses in between her words.

"We are beings that were created with the sole purpose of overlooking this whole project; we have no right to question our Creator. Even if you want to know, we can't answer your question when we don't even know the answer ourselves."

"Why don't you just ask that Creator of yours? I am sure you can do that." Kaneo questioned.

"Didn't I just say? We were created with a single mission and it is not our job to bring unnecessary work to our Creator. Doing something like that is out of our expertise." Akai frowned at Kaneo, "You really need to listen properly Kaneo, you might end up dying very quickly in the game."

What Akai just said was outright disturbing to the participants. Their well-being was basically entrusted onto two animals who were not even living in the first place. There will be no way for the animals to have emotions like sympathy to the participants and the idea of negotiating with them to not go on with the plans were promptly shot down by her sentence.

"Hey, there are only two of them and sixteen of us. Even if they are animals, we can beat them to a pulp. I, for sure, will be able to take them on myself, the title SHSL Street Fighter is not for show." The red haired male stepped to the front of the group, circled his shoulders and took up a fighting stance.

"Count me in! Don't underestimate me just because I am a female! " Michiko moved to stand beside the red haired male and placed both of her hands on her hips.

"It's time for me to show the power transhumanism-sm-sm!" The white haired girl raised her left arm threateningly.

With the three's actions and words, everyone seems to regain their confidence and looked at both Aoi and Akai determinedly. After all, they outnumbered the animals; there was no way they will lose to them.

"This won't do…" With a troubled expression, Akai studied the expressions and actions of the participants who were are standing in front of her unwavering before finally landing her eyes on Kaneo.

"W-what…?" Coughing out blood, Kaneo stared blankly at the knife that was stuck in his stomach without his knowledge. He was just standing there and the next thing he knew, he was colouring the floor red with his blood. "H-h-how did…? What…?"

"N-n-no way… is this for real?" A slightly chubby male said in disbelief with a soft voice. He was shaking quite badly but that was understandable.

Screams of shock and surprise soon sounded out and words of concern mixed in with the screams.

"What the? We gotta close up that wound of ya!" The male with the blue cap supported Kaneo and tried to stop the flow of the bleeding with his own hands. The blood flowing from Kaneo stained the male's leather gloves.

"Don't pull the knife out! He will bleed to death!" The SHSL Street Fighter forcefully grabbed the hands of the male away from Kaneo.

"Bro! Before this dude can pay a visit to the heavens, I will reach there before him if ya keep crushin' my hands like that!"

"Sorry, my bad. Are you alright?"

"'m fine, just… don't do th's again ya hear me?"

"Yeah…got it."

 _Excuse my lack of politeness, but I will die here if you guys just keep chatting!_ With the lack of energy to say that much, Kaneo can only resort to screaming internally.

"As you can see, your life depends on us. That was just a small demonstration, Kaneo won't actually die from that. Of course, unless you left him as he is." Ignoring the scene before her, Akai delivered the next threat to them, "The next one to disobey us will be the first to die. So, do be careful."

"Always straight to the point ain't ya, Akai?" Aoi grinned wolfishly at Akai.

"We need to start the killing game somehow. Them not believing us is a hindrance to our job."

"True, I don't want to get deleted you know?"

"Oi! Start explaining to us properly! What the hell is going on here?" Kichirou shouted in irritation.

"Let us start your brand new life here-" Akai begun.

"Project Rebirth Point engaged!" Aoi ended.

With those words as their parting, Aoi and Akai disappeared right in front of the participants' eyes. Clearly, they had no intention to response to Kichirou.

Like glass, the trust between the fellow students shattered into countless pieces. Try as they might, restoring what was broken will never fully work. There will _always_ be scars that cannot heal ever again.

.

.

.

"Just a quick question, did anyone bother asking that stupid wolf-doggy how to get out of this simulation?"

Silence was the answer to Kichirou's question as everyone stared at him dumbfounded.

"Ah, that's what I thought." Kichirou nodded to himself.

"Guys? Some help here? Please? Help me?" Pleaded the forgotten one.

* * *

 **Sometime at somewhere**

"Creator! Why did you even create Aoi? My job will be so much better without him meddling around!"

"Hahaha~ You know, both of your personalities were not supposed to be like this. I just swapped your personality with Aoi's on a whim."

"Why would you want to do such things?"

"Ah~ah~ We can't let our readers know the truth yet, it will take all the fun away you know?"

"Readers? Who are you talking about?"

"Hmm~ Nothing, forget about it okay? Just fulfill your job ~"

"If you say so…"

"Also, Akai. I thought you said it's not your right to question the Creator?"

"…"

"Eh~ Don't tell me you are starting to learn how to be disobedient from Aoi?"

"Just…do your work, Creator."

"Fine, fine. What a bummer…"

 _This time for sure... I will definitely..._

* * *

 _Finally, a place where I can start all over again._

 _I wonder how long it will take this time before someone hates me again._

Who knows? Maybe I will break my personal record.

 _Will someone from this group call me a monster just like everyone else?_

 _The monster that hurts everyone._

 _The monster…_

 _That I am._

 _._

 _How long had it been? Till now, there has been no change._

 _Every day, every hour, every minute and every second._

 _It was not supposed to be like this at all._

 _Why was I so different from them?_

 _Why can't I be more like them?_

 _It was no wonder they looked down on me so much._

 _After all, I too,_ _ **hate**_ _myself._

 _._

 _Live on news! A huge scoop!_

 _Here we have a man and a woman throwing verbal insults at each other._

 _Wow, they really are perfect for each other._

 _The very definition of a happy couple._

 _I am sure everyone loves to have such a relationship like theirs._ _ **Not.**_

 _I am getting really tired of this._

 _Can someone just get me out of this hellhole already?_

* * *

AN:

I AM ALIVE! Hello? Anyone still here?

Sorry, for the really late updates. Currently, I had to work full day on all weekdays and some of the weekends and was unable to have the time to really sit down in front of my computer and write the story. While I was able to plan minor things for this story during my work (when I am free), I was not able to make much progression in it as all my information are stored in my thumb drive which I have no access to during my work.

I will try to update more often and I had pretty much planned all of the main story (murders, trials etc). I just need to find the time to type them into the computer.

Okay, let's get down to business.

1) So… How does everyone view this chapter and the second introduction for some of these characters? Some were properly introduced while the rest had a few lines. I believed I covered all of the characters in this chapter.

2) Regarding the FTEs, the polls will only be up when everyone has been properly introduced. I am so sorry for the long wait. Since badfutureliz mentioned in the review about contributing for FTEs, if there are any of the creators of the accepted OCs want me to show what happen in their characters' FTEs, feel free to PM me. This is optional. However, do note that I may change things up slightly or even not use them at all (we can't have a FTE with a dead character can we?).

3) So, one brilliant artist by the name of Richard Conway shared their drawings of their own OC who featured in this story. Thank you so much for those awesome drawings! I hope the rest of you like the drawings as well! The links can be found on my profile as well. Another drawing by another artist has been shared to me quite awhile ago as well, but I will only put it up when that character has been properly introduced.

The link below is some of the appearances of Kichirou Mutsumi, the SHSL Lucky Student. They were all drawn by his creator, Richard Conway.

Postimg /gallery/31vt9z9sw/ (Add .org after postimg)

Do tell me if any of the links did not work.

4) Special thanks to BlueTanaka, tobi-is-an-artist-too, ComplicatedYetSimple, badfutureliz, Shyjoker, Zenvix and Sarius909 for reviewing the previous chapter!

Anyway, I hope all of you enjoyed this chapter. Hopefully, I did not disappoint any of you (Which I am sure I did anyway). I have been gone from fanfiction for a while. The number of new SYOC fic for danganronpa I missed is not a joke. *Cries*


	8. 7 Wonders

Chapter 1.2: 7 Wonders

With the disappearance of the two animals, there was a tensed silence as everyone exchanged cautious glances with each other. However, the tensed atmosphere was broken by a painful groan from Kaneo and everyone ignored the elephant in the room in favour of helping him. All of them need time to digest the information that was just given to them and the injured man on the ground was a good distraction for the time being.

Kaneo was currently kneeing on the grassy ground with one hand on the ground to prevent him from falling to the ground while his other hand tried to stop the bleeding somehow. For a stimulation, the pain was pretty real and he had no doubt that he would really die if he left his wound as it was.

Having a knife stuck in his stomach, there was a problem on how to transport him to a safe place with better medical equipment and for him to rest. He can neither be carried over someone's shoulder like a sack of potatoes nor can he be piggybacked as well. Both cases will definitely cause his wound to worsen and everyone was in a bind as they gave worried glances to Kaneo.

The dizziness and faint headache caused by the loss of blood was beginning to get worse and Kaneo held his head in his hands as if he can physically stop the symptoms. He winced when someone shouted right beside him as it caused his headache to worsen.

Black spots started appearing in his vision and they were quickly taking over his sight. Before he knew it, he was leaning sideways with his head resting on someone's shoulder. Muttering an apology under his breath, Kaneo closed his eyes in a desperate attempt to chase away the pounding in his head.

His eyes snapped open in shock when he felt someone lifted him into their arms. Lifting his eyes upwards to look at the face of his carrier through blurry eyes, he wished that he could completely faint right at that moment. In that way, he will be able to be saved by being in such embarrassing situation.

While he was grateful for the kindness showed by the SHSL Street Fighter, he would rather not be princess carried by a guy – not that Michiko's offer to do so was any better – if he can help it. It would damage his already non-existing manly pride.

Dimly, he realized that his carrier had started running and was currently following two people right in front of them. However, Kaneo was unable to make out who was the two through his blurry eyesight.

Somewhere through his transportation, Kaneo fainted before regaining his consciousness when his carrier placed him on something soft – a bed.

Faintly, he noticed that he was in an unfamiliar room made of wooden materials and a few people were talking over each other. He had a hard time trying to process what was being said by them when his conscious was fading in and out repeatedly again. It was difficult for him to continue to remain conscious even though he did just faint momentarily before waking up again.

A stinging pain blossomed along his right cheek and his head was tilted to the side from the force of the slap. It took Kaneo a few seconds to come to an understanding that he had just been slapped and it left him slightly more aware of his surroundings from the sudden impact.

"Please stay awake while we remove the knife and dress your wound, it will pass just in a minute." A soothing and smooth voice relaxed Kaneo just a tiny bit and he was curious to see the owner of such a voice.

Through half-lidded eyes, Kaneo peered at dark green eyes that held a faint concern covered by a stern look. Clearly, the other was worried about Kaneo but was giving him the look to make sure Kaneo listen to them.

 _It's nice…and nostalgic._ With a faint smile, Kaneo gave a small nod towards Green Eyes before concentrating on keeping conscious by focusing all of his attention on the shine found in the green eyes.

A piercing pain caused him to pull an ugly face when the knife was removed from its' previous position before a cloth replaced it. His body was being held up a few inches from the bed by two strong arms while another smaller and softer hand wrapped bandages around his body with fast and experienced motions.

The bed was soft and comfy and Kaneo was slowly lured to sleep by the soft touches of someone putting the last touches of dressing his wound. He figured that it was fine for him to sleep now that the knife was out of his stomach and his wound dressed. How he long to sleep the pain away and deal with all the other issues when he was all better.

The last thing he heard was the voice of the green-eyed female before he fell into his long awaited blissful sleep.

"Sleep."

* * *

Kaneo woke up to bright white light and the first thing he did was to pull the blanket covering his body over his head to block out the light and ignored the repeated calling of his name and shaking of his body. Unfortunately for him, his attempt to fall back into his peaceful dream was interrupted when his blanket was pulled harshly away from him and he was once again assaulted by the brightness of the light.

Groaning, Kaneo reluctantly sat up on the bed and rubbed both his eyes in an attempt to chase away any lingering sleepiness. When he was done, he looked to his right and was faced with a redhead who looked beyond pissed off at him.

"Are you up yet?" The SHSL Street Fighter growled and pinned him down with his fiery eyes. Kaneo was instantly shock awake by the redhead and immediately jumped up from his bed – ignoring the stabbing pain from his abdomen and the dizziness caused by his sudden movement – and straighten his back like a soldier in front of his commander. He was almost tempted to salute the person in front of him but reject the idea at the last minute. He wouldn't know if the other will took it kindly or not.

Discreetly, Kaneo studied the appearance of the redhead. Short, spiky red hair covered the person's head but it was longer on the top. Light green eyes narrowed in irritation at Kaneo and he quickly broke the eye contact with the redhead. Despite the slim body the other party had, his muscular physique can be seen clearly through his black tucked-in t-shirt and a red casual jacket with long yellow sleeves. The collar of his jacket was popped up and a pair of dark jeans with black iron tipped boots completed his outfit.

However, what caught Kaneo's eyes the most was the multiple earrings found on both of the male's ears. Four earrings of various colors and two silver stud earrings can be found in both of his ears. His right ear spotted purple, black, red and white earrings while his left ear consisted of red, green, black and yellow earrings.

After being satisfied with his silent observation of the redhead, Kaneo gave a small, determined nod to himself before lifting his eyes to make contact with green ones before introducing himself to the young man.

"With what happened, I doubt we introduced ourselves. I'm Kaneo Nanasaki, the SHSL Designer, what's your name?"

"Rhett Greenfield, the SHSL Street Fighter," Rhett replied with a deep voice yet somehow sounding young.

After their introduction, both of them fell into an awkward silence. The awkwardness was so thick between the two of them that it was almost a tangible presence. Scratching his cheek with a finger, Kaneo thought of a topic to talk about to disperse the awkwardness but he came up with nothing. However, he did notice that Rhett was not even looking at him and was instead staring somewhere behind him. Kaneo twisted his neck to look behind him to see what Rhett was looking at but was unable to find anything unusual with the picture.

Kaneo turned his head back to face Rhett again before tilting his head slightly to the side as a sign of an unspoken question.

Letting out a small puff of air from his mouth, Rhett walked past Kaneo to the bed – that Kaneo was just lying on – and begun making the bed. Rhett's actions confused Kaneo – _Why is he making the bed of all things?_ – and he stared at Rhett dumbly until light green eyes snapped up to meet his black ones. Kaneo jumped in shock when Rhett's piercing glare burned an imaginary hole in him.

"You should always make your bed after waking up every time, you should already know that at your age. I shall excuse you this time since you are injured, but don't forget next time." Rhett returned his sight to the bed again when Kaneo gave a small sound of agreement.

Kaneo certainly did not expect Rhett to be of someone who would be so conscious about the tidiness of the place – or maybe it's just the bed – from his appearance alone. He figured Rhett would be the typical musclehead who were all brawn and no brains without the word 'sanitary' in his dictionary. Indeed, he should not have judged a book by its cover in the first place. Nevertheless, Rhett was still intimidating just from his eyes alone.

"Thanks." Kaneo thanked Rhett, even though it was more of a question, when the task of bed making had finished.

Rhett nodded once as an acknowledgment to Kaneo's word before pushing his shoulders down to caused him to sit down on the bed heavily.

"You need the rest, don't strain your body after getting a wound like that." Rhett walked towards the small bookshelf at the corner before taking a random book and passing it to Kaneo. "Read this to pass the time or something, just don't make too much movement that will reopen your wound."

 _Slightly rough around the edges but a good person nonetheless._ His own thoughts caused Kaneo to grin at Rhett which resulted in the latter furrowing his eyebrows in question back at him. He believed he would not have much trouble getting along with Rhett.

"Tsuya is currently getting more clean bandages from the shop, after his return, I will be helping you to change your bandages."

 _Tsuya? Who's that?_

Just when Kaneo was about to question more about this 'Tsuya' person, their attention was taken away by the knock on the door and Rhett walked towards it to open the door to let the person behind the door into the room.

"Speak of the devil and he shall come," Rhett commented upon seeing the male behind the door and held the door wide open for him to walk in.

"Hmm? Ya talkin' about me?" The other person questioned. "Oh? Finally woke up did ya?" Hazel eyes locked on Kaneo once the owner noticed him sitting on the bed.

Giving a short answer as a reply, Kaneo studied the male who was carrying a box of red and white first aid kit to the desk at the side. From the corner of his eyes, he noticed that Rhett had just closed the door and was heading towards the desk as well.

The other male had short, orange hair, which was kept combed back that allowed the full view of his hazel eyes to anyone looking. He has a build that is slightly muscular, someone who probably worked out occasionally or at least had a job that requires a fair bit of physical strength.

He wore an unzipped grey jumpsuit that showed a white shirt under it, both of which have various oil stains on them. Some type of white cloth can be seen poking out from one of his jumpsuit pockets. His blue cap was worn normally with a little wrench icon found in the middle of it and a pair of leather gloves covered both of his hands.

After placing down the first aid kit on the desk, the new guy bounced – _bounced!_ – towards Kaneo with a huge grin on his face.

"Name's Atsuya Nijimura, but just call me Tsuya. Just prefer it, 's all." Tsuya greeted enthusiastically to the wounded male before extending a hand for Kaneo to shake on.

"Right, nice to meet you Tsuya!" Amusingly, Kaneo noted that Tsuya reminded him heavily of Masa, with both of their high energy and their wish to be called with a more informal name; it was hard not to see those similarities. Kaneo had a really good feeling about this potential friend.

"Dude, ya totally had the worst luck ya know? Getting' stabbed and all that. Not fun for ya huh?" Of course, this potential friend just had to say where it hurts the most.

"No shit, you really need to ask a question like that?"

"Hey hey, chill down hothead, just makin' a conversation ya know?" Tsuya further inched away from Rhett. "Don't need to get all hot and bothered."

Before any more arguments can arise between the two, Kaneo quickly cut off anything that Rhett was about to say.

"Not my idea of fun, but at least I am alive."

"Ain't that the truth?" Tsuya snickered.

"Right right, stop the chit-chatting and strip, Kaneo." Sometime during the conversation, Rhett had approached from the desk to the other two and stood beside Tsuya.

"…" Both Kaneo and Tsuya stared at Rhett with a funny expression.

"What?"

"Not that I got anythin' against it," Tsuya held up both of his hands with his palms upwards before shrugging, "but don't ya think ya came off a bit too strong, buddy?"

Rolling his eyes at the other two participants, Rhett held up the first aid kit he was holding in his right hand.

"If he doesn't strip, how am I going to change his bandages?"

"Oh." Feeling foolish, that one word was the only thing that Kaneo and Tsuya can say.

Rhett nodded and repeated what they say in mocking manner. With one knee on the floor, Rhett placed the first aid kit down on the floor before opening it.

"Anythin' I can help with?" Tsuya enquired Rhett.

Holding a pair of transparent gloves, Rhett gave it to Tsuya before answering, "Wear these and remove the bandage and gauze on Kaneo."

Taking the gloves from Rhett, Tsuya removed his own leather gloves before replacing them with the transparent one. Sitting beside Kaneo, he slowly and carefully unwound the bandage that was wrapped around Kaneo. After that, he took off the gauze that was stuck on Kaneo's stomach before throwing the soiled bandage, gauze and the transparent gloves away in the bin located beside the desk. Without being prompted, he took a layer of gauze from the kit before spreading some type of paste on it. Rhett gave a questioning look at that.

"I saw what Takako did in the mornin'," Tsuya answered Rhett's unspoken question.

Rhett held a cotton ball with metal tweezers before soaking it with disinfectant. Reminding Kaneo that it will sting, he dabbed at the wound to disinfect it. After the usage of a few cotton balls, Rhett gave the ok to Tsuya who carefully placed the new gauze onto the wound.

"Hold the gauze while I bandage him."

"Gotcha."

With experienced hands, Rhett quickly wrapped the gauze in place with a fresh roll of bandage. When he was done, he taped the bandage in place with a tape. Once the bandages were deemed as secured, both of them stood up and give a quick look at Kaneo's appearance before frowning at the same time.

"…What?" Kaneo swallowed hard and questioned them. He was getting a bad feeling.

"You really need to eat and work out more, you are too skinny."

Tsuya nodded viscously and it somehow caused Kaneo to be more pissed off seeing him agreeing so zealously than the actual spoken words of Rhett.

"Why are you two so surprised anyway, both of you were probably there when I was first brought into this room."

"We were actually more worried about the injury than ya physical state at that time."

Tsuya's words immediately diffuse all of Kaneo's thoughts on continuing to rebut them when a single matter was brought to his attention. Really, he must be a real scatterbrain if he forgot something like this.

"Right… About that…I'm sorry it took so long for me to say this." Kaneo stood up from the bed and bowed at them. "Thank you two so much for helping me especially when I am a stranger to the two of you."

"Don't worry about it, can't have ya goin' dead on us right?" Tsuya waved off the apology and gratitude easily before attempting to stop Kaneo's bow and convinced him to sit back down. "Besides, we're not strangers anymore right?"

"Right." A warm smile spread across Kaneo's face.

"Since we were at the topic of physical appearance," Rhett glowered at Tsuya "You need to change and wash your clothes. Those oil stains of yours will need to go."

" 'n that's my cue to scram outta here. See ya later Kaneo!" With a hasty farewell, Tsuya promptly escaped from the room. Rather, he was escaping from Rhett.

Kaneo arched an eyebrow at Rhett questionably.

"I may or may not have talked to him about his appearance a couple times."

Kaneo lifted his eyebrow further up. It's only been a short while since he knew the SHSL Street Fighter, but he did not believe Rhett would let the matter go so easily.

"Fine," Rhett snarled in response to Kaneo's reaction and balled his fists, "I probably told him off tens of times. Are you satisfied with my answer now? You better not be sloppy like that guy as well if not you will get more than a few harsh words."

Putting up both of his hands in mocked surrender, Kaneo quickly agreed and mentally filed the information as something important. After all, he did not want to get on Rhett's bad side.

"Rest up." Rhett snapped at Kaneo one last time before stomping out the room. However, not before he gave a quick clean up on the medical items on the floor.

 _Really, definitely rough around the edges but still a good person. Though, considering his talent, I doubt he is someone who is all bark and no bite._

Picking up the forgotten book from his bed, Kaneo spent the rest of the night away reading it.

* * *

Kaneo was surprised to find himself being interrupted by a few knocks on his door during his sleep. No, he was not surprised at being interrupted; he was surprised at the thought of him being asleep. He presumed that he had slept most of the previous day away and was prepared to be up the whole night but it seemed like being injured took most of his energy away.

He sat up on his bed and noticed that it was already morning from the bright sunlight shining into the room through the window. Shifting his body sideways, he placed both of his feet on the floor before noticing the book he was reading the night before was lying flat open on the ground.

Picking it up, he placed it on his desk so that he will be able to access to it easily when he was to continue his reading later in the day. For now, he wanted to explore the room. On the desk, he spotted a huge black drawing tablet that looked suspiciously like the exact one he got at home. He was sure that he left his own at his house before going out. Turning it on, he looked through the photo gallery and was shocked to see that it ha-

Two sharp knocks on the door pulled him out from his own thoughts and he looked at the door in confusion for a few seconds before realizing that those knocks were the ones who woke him up and someone had been waiting for him to open up for some time now.

Abandoning the tablet on the desk, Kaneo rushed hurriedly towards the door before yanking it open as fast as he can.

" –ay not be in…" A deadpanned voice finished off before continuing again. "Nevermind…"

"See! I told you he's in!" A gorgeous girl replied to the other female before addressing Kaneo, "Hey there! You probably already know who I am, but just in case that you don`t, I am Andrea Jensen, the best TV host in European history!...Just kidding!"

Andrea had ruffled chocolate brown hair that looked really soft with slight bangs that reached down to her left eye. She had hazel eyes that were green and browner towards the pupil. Slender shoulders and she become slimmer towards her waist, giving her a curvy look. Her legs and arms are surprisingly thin, not having any noticeable muscles there.

When Andrea held up her right hand to wave at Kaneo, he noticed that she has a tattoo of a star on her right wrist. It was yellow and small, roughly about 3 cm in diameter. On her left wrist, she wore different braided bracelets of different colors.

Her upper body consisted of a white t-shirt with a printed-on dark blue tie. Serving as a jacket was an unbuttoned plaided blue, white and light green shirt with long sleeves that were folded a little to show off her tattoo on her right wrist. Her pants were grey skinny jeans, showing off her long and skinny legs. They looked to be really expensive and from a well-known brand that Kaneo probably passed by before. Her dark blue shoes with black laces seemed to be very comfortable and fancy at the same time with the brand name paste at the side of the shoes.

Giving a small 'hello' to Andrea, Kaneo moved his gaze to the other female standing right beside Andrea. He reckoned that he should let the two introduced themselves first before giving his own name and title.

Noticing the shift in Kaneo's attention, the other female introduced herself as well.

"The name is Ikue Kurosawa, I am the SHSL Commentator of your life."

"…What?" Kaneo was sure that he was going to say this one-word numerous times during his stay here. Not a good sign at all.

Ikue had black, long and scruffy hair that went down right to her shoulders. Hazel eyes were framed by a pair of wide-frame glasses which was made up of dark gray frames and transparent lenses. She was lanky and lean, generally lacking in muscle and does not look physically strong. A single mole can be found on her left cheek, making her look endearing. A set of small and golden hoop earrings hung on both of her ears and they shone whenever they were caught in the sun.

She wore a denim jacket, under which is a plain white t-shirt. Around her hips was a simple black belt that held up an ordinary pair of baggy brown pants. At the end of the pants, her feet were snug and soft in a pair of brown loafers.

"Ah, nothing. I figured your life would be worth commenting. I mean, you were stabbed on the first day of your stay here. If that is not a sign of bad luck than I don't know what it is. I recommend you seeing a fortune teller if you can. But hey, you don't have to take my advice." She shrugged indifferently before looking up and down at Kaneo. "Heh, even your outfit screams bad luck, you should ask some of the more fashionable people around here to give you a make over.I'm pretty sure the SHSL Lucky Student is one of the participants, maybe you can ask him for som-"

"Okay, okay, I got it!" Kaneo hurriedly cut off Ikue's blabbering. It did seem rude but he rather be rude than allowed Ikue to continue chattering on. He really hoped that Ikue will not continue to attack him this way, his heart won't be able to take any more damage than that. At the very least, she did not appear to be doing it out of spite or due to any negative feelings towards him.

A muffled giggles, as if the owner was trying to cover their laughter, drifted towards Kaneo's ears. Kaneo looked towards the source of the giggles and he looked miserably at Andrea who was covering her mouth with one of her hands while another snaked around her waist. Her body trembled slightly from the force of her laughter.

Really, it was a wonder how they were able to act so normal despite the pressing issue they were suddenly forced to take care of. Kaneo determinedly toss that negative thought to the very back of his mind. He will deal with it when the time comes, more specifically, probably when it all blew up.

"Hahaha, Ikue, leave the poor man alone. He looked like he wants to jump into any available hole right now." Despite her words, soft giggles still escaped from her mouth. "Plus, we are not here to laugh at his misery."

… _You are the only one actively laughing at my misery._ Kaneo thought gloomily in his head before introducing himself to the two of them and querying on their intention of looking for him.

"Considering you are late for breakfast, someone would need to come by your cottage to wake you up and bring you to the diner," Ikue elaborated on Andrea's point, "I don't know about you, but I would be pretty hungry if I did not eat for a whole day and I never like feeling hungry."

Now that Ikue had just mentioned it, Kaneo did felt a pain in his stomach but he had always thought that it was due to his stab wound and not due to hunger. His cheeks coloured in light pinkish hues as he blushed at the noises coming from his empty stomach. At least it was not that far away from where they were even though his cottage was one of the furthest away, he will be able to get to the diner in no time.

"I'm sure you can last the whole way! You can do it!" Andrea flashed a bright smile at Kaneo as she encouraged him, enveloping his hands together in hers to bring some sort of comfort to him.

Kaneo seriously had mixed feeling about what she said. Should he be glad about the encouragement or be in misery again? In the end, he decided to express his gratitude and she let go of his hands after that.

"You can close the door without locking it," Ikue gestured for the other two to start walking after Kaneo did as she told, "we can only enter the room assigned to us through the use of our guide, another person's guide will just be rejected entry."

"Yupe! We tried multiple times and it does not seem like there is any way to bypass the system." Andrea said cheerfully before her expression fell, "At least we all can feel some form of safety while we sleep…"

An air of melancholy surrounded the three of them as they were reminded of the situation they were unknowingly thrown into.

"Personally, I would rather not be in the situation where safety is a need for us, but that's just me." Ikue deadpanned without any expression on her face.

"We will get through this, everyone is working hard after all."

Hearing that, Kaneo felt positive again. He was quite sure that Andrea will be an important part of keeping the morale up in the group. However, what she said did make him curious.

"Everyone?"

"Yes, we did meet briefly together after you fainted yesterday to discuss the more important issues. We decided to hold off the discussion until you were able to at least move on your own to anywhere you want before continuing the discussion." Ikue explained in Andrea's state. "It makes sense since by then you would mostly be healed enough to concentrate fully on the conversation. Looking at you right now, we probably will meet later today or tomorrow morning."

While it sounds great that they were all actively trying to look for a solution, it was unfortunate that he will be forced to face the issue instead of escaping from it for as long as it can. However, for such a circumstance, escaping seemed to be a lost cause.

"We can't leave you out after all! Everyone's opinion is needed to make sure we all survive this ordeal." Andrea held up a pointer finger as if she just thought of something. "Oh! But I was just quoting someone else."

Kaneo requested the name of the person from Andrea, figuring that taking note of such a person who said these kinds of things would be worth it.

Andrea took a moment to recall the name of the person before replying to Kaneo, "I believe her name is Takako Kawahata, she is the SHSL Homeopath. Also, that paste that aids in your healing was made by her as well."

 _Looks like I'm in debt to Takako._ Kaneo's gratefulness towards Takako had just increase.

With that, the trio arrived in front of a tall wooden building that Kaneo recognized as the diner and he walked towards the front door. After walking a few steps, he noticed that the other two had stopped in their trek and did not have any intention to go into the building at all.

"Are you two not eating?" Kaneo asked with a puzzled look on his face.

"What time do you think it is now?" Ikue had no hesitation in shooting Kaneo down. "We have already eaten before heading to your cottage."

"Right…" Kaneo bid them goodbye and proceed to the front door of the diner.

"By the way, why did you two volunteer to come fetch me?" Kaneo stopped in front of the door before turning back to shout his question to the back view of the two females.

"Oh no, we did not, we lost the rock-paper-scissor," Ikue stated matter-of-factly with a dismissive wave of her hand. She did not even bother to turn her head towards Kaneo before answering.

 _This girl has no mercy._ Kaneo thought in despair and he can see Andrea in the distance trying to stifle her laughter again. Turning away from the sight of the two girls, Kaneo opened the dark wooden door of the diner. At least both of them were likable even though the truths Ikue vocalized hurted sometimes.

Kaneo was no stranger to the interior of the building as he did visit the place briefly before. He expected the same state of tranquility as usual but was surprised to find that it was not the case at all.

There were two females and one male standing right under the large wisteria tree and they gave Kaneo the impression that they were all in a heated debate. To be more accurate, the two females were the ones arguing while the male was trying to pacify the angry females. Unfortunately, it did not appear to be working very well.

As Kaneo walked closer to the three of them, he was able to catch bits and pieces of what they were bickering about.

"-ack! Since the past, and even now, homeopathy had saved many lives, how can you jus- really, you are so ignorant." Despite the anger marking her voice, the owner of the voice sounded somewhat soothing and familiar to Kaneo but he just can't quite put his finger on it.

"As I said, homeopathy is great and all but transhumanism will be the breakthrough to the further evolution of the human race-ce-ce!" Strangely, the female with pure white hair repeated her last words.

"Come on now, there is no need for so much hostility between the two of you." The male broke out in cold sweat and he seems to be very close to having a nervous breakdown. "Both of you have some valid points, the two of you just nee-" He cut himself off when he noticed the appearance of Kaneo, who was trying to sneak away once he realised how much trouble he will be in if he got dragged into the conversation.

"Mon ami, you have to help me here." Approaching quickly towards Kaneo, the male pulled the unwilling Kaneo by his wrist and dragged him towards the still arguing females.

Everything happened too fast for Kaneo to react which caused him to fail in pulling his hand away and escaping the place. He was getting nervous and kind of wished that he had chosen to forgo having breakfast. This type of situation was not in his area of expertise and he really had no idea what to do to break up the fight.

"I have no idea why I am even having this conversation with you; I believed it is pointless to continue talking to you." The female with the familiar voice said while turning her head away as if she cannot even stand the sight of the other female.

"Now, that is impolite of you to shut me down like that! Just because you came from some type of rich family does not mean you can act like that!"

"W-what!? I did no-"

"Hey, how about we all take a step back and cool down first? Some physical distance away from each other will be good." Kaneo reluctantly included himself into the conversation. "With how agitated you two are, the discussion will go nowhere."

The two females held their glare at each other and ignored Kaneo. Just when they were about to continue where they left off, Kaneo took a leaf out of the other male's book. He took hold the wrist of the one with the familiar voice - who was standing closest to him out of the two of them – and pulled her behind one of the wooden pillar.

When the white haired female left their sight, it was clear that the female who Kaneo unceremoniously dragged with him had most of her anger dispersed. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths to calm herself down before slowly opening them again.

"I apologize for my behavior just now, it was not a very good first impression. I believe a proper introduction is needed." She relaxed her tense shoulders before letting her arms fall comfortably in front of her and clasped her hands. "I'm Takako Kawahata, a homeopathic practitioner. I'm delighted to be making your acquaintance."

"The pleasure is all mine, Takako, my name is Kaneo Nanasaki, a designer."

Takako had dark green eyes that were framed by a wavy side-fringe. Her black hair – that stopped just slightly below her chin – was slightly wavy but got curlier at the very end of it. The left down of her hair was held back with a wide floral-patterned Alice-band. Her body was a mixture of lean, slightly curvy and softness. All in all, Kaneo noted that she looked quite mature for someone who was probably around the same age as him.

She wore a long-sleeved, knee length turquoise dress with some sort of floral patterning on it. Fanciful, white detailing around the hem and sleeve cuffs beautified the dress and complemented the white peter-pan collar. With this, she wore a white, chunky-knit bottomless cardigan, white thigh-high socks, and plain black pumps.

Her ears are pierced-once each side and her ear studs are small, gold-coloured and shaped like birds in flight. On her left wrist, she wears a simple wristwatch with a pink leather strap, and on her right hand, she wears a silver coloured charm bracelet with different charms on it. Kaneo was only able to identify some of them – a rose, a bow, a cloud, a teardrop, a round disk and a yin-yang symbol – as the rest were hidden from the way she held her hands.

"That's right, how is your injury, Kaneo?" Placing her right hand on her stomach, she patted it a few times to highlight the body part where Kaneo had his wound. As she did so, her charms jangled at her wrist with her action.

"Thanks to your medical paste, I'm healing rather quickly."

"It's the least I could do."

"It's more than enough." Kaneo beamed at her before frowning in concern. "Can you tell me what happened back there? There is a possibility that I can help to solve the problem."

"Simply put, we had a disagreement in our views." The smile on Takako's face dropped and she furrowed her brows. "She was making light of and looking down on my ideals and I got a little defensive."

"Maybe you guys had a misunderstanding? Sometimes when things get too heated, people make mistakes."Kaneo scratched his head. "You could be wrong."

"My view about homeopathy is not wrong! I will not stand for anyone looking down on me or homeopathy for the matter!" Takako's mouth thinned and her eyes narrowed into slits of fury as her words came out quicker in her anger, "If that's all you have to say, I believed this conversation is over."

"Calm down, I am neither saying you or the other girl is wrong nor looking down on you in any way. Ideals can clash together but sometimes if you look at another angle, you may find that they are the perfect complementary." Kaneo shook his head, "It's not that first time these types of thing happen and I'm sure it won't be the last time either. Take a moment to think about it and talk it through with the other girl."

"Right… You have a point. I must apologize for what I accused you of, it was not right for me to do so."

"Don't worry about it, it was not entirely your fault. My way of phrasing came out wrong as well. How about we let it go and forget about it?"

"Yes, I agreed. I believed a walk will further clear my mind and allow me to think more clearly, please excuse my leave." Takako smiled politely at Kaneo and nodded her head. "Until next time."

"See you!" Kaneo returned the gesture and watched Takako's departure until she left the building itself.

Kaneo was not naïve to think that some words will be able to totally change Takako's perspective, but hopefully, he did at least plant the seed of allowing her to think more openly. After all, leaning too much to one side without considering both ends were dangerous. He knew that well.

Maybe he still has hope in the whole breaking-up-fights-and-make-it-all-better department. It's time for him to take his own advice and listen to the opposite end. He approached the other two people who were still standing down the wisteria tree and gave them a short greeting.

"Bonjour! I'm Boniface Hyakushi, a Drama Club Leader."

Boniface had a short black wavy hair that falls just above where his eyes should be. He had an average build, with not much muscle on him. Kaneo noticed that Boniface was slightly shorter than him.

Covering the top of his head was a black pork pie hat with red ribbon and he wore a white mask that hid his upper face. Kaneo was unable to figure out his eyes colours and took a mental note to ask how Boniface sees through his seemingly opaque mask later.

Boniface's right hand was covered by a black buttoned glove while his left hand was uncovered. He wore a black jacket over what Kaneo assumed to be red button shirt, black tie with white stripes that was used like a scarf and a pin in shape of an eye on the tie. Lastly, a red sneaker covered his shoes.

Nodding at Boniface to acknowledge his introduction, Kaneo gestured for the female to introduce herself too. Noticing the gesture, the female stood tall, thumped a hand on her chest and turned her head slightly upwards.

"Stand and be amazed-azed-azed! You are in the presence of THE SHSL Transhumanist Tetsuko Ayanokouji-ji-ji!"

Her waist length white hair was tied into a long ponytail that was low braided and her bangs slightly covered her red eyes. Despite her tall stature, Tetsuko had a really thin body to the point of being unhealthy. Kaneo wondered if she was eating her daily meals properly or if it was in her genes. A black tank-top and a pair of ash-gray jean-shorts covered the necessary parts and she wore a pair of red and white lace-up sneakers with white socks that go up to her mid thigh.

After hearing their introductions, Kaneo announced his name as well before enquiring about the details of the fight earlier.

"We stumbled upon each other in the diner and figured that we should get to know each other. Since, you know, we all decided that the best way to survive is to know as much about each other as possible-ble-ble." At that statement, Kaneo blinked once but did not interrupt Tetsuko, "However, it seems that we just could not agree with the other's principle-ple-ple."

Adjusting his mask with a hand, Boniface made a sound of agreement before stating that he was there for a cup of water when he encountered the two arguing females. He managed to somewhat piece together everything that happened from listening to them before stepping up to try and break up the fight.

Tetsuko mentioned that she did admire Takako as someone who pursued her ideals with all her might as evidenced by her becoming the SHSL Homeopath. In fact, she was sure that homeopathy will be able to help so many people and Takako definitely was an accomplished person who already helped countless. However, a clash of ideals was a clash of ideals. She is very adamant that transhumanism is something that cannot change the world as Takako's implied.

 _Oh…They really did misunderstand each other._

Both of them were under the impression that the other was looking down on their belief. It was probably the wrong choice of wording that caused them this dispute in the first place and with the both of them holding onto their ideals so strongly that they were a bit too defensive about it. Hence, it resulted in the misconception about the other's interpretation. Kaneo relayed his finding to Tetsuko which cause her to light up in delight.

"I'm not sure if we can see eye to eye, but at least we actually did not stomp and spit on each other's ideals." Tetsuko let out a sigh. "I guess it would be better for me to go out and find Takako to at least clear up the misunderstanding-ing-ing."

With a thumbs up from Kaneo and a smirk from Boniface, Tetsuko widened her already big smile.

"If you lost any limbs, be sure to find me and I can replace them for you with a set of brand new prosthetics for free!" Walking backward, Tetsuko waved goodbye energetically at the both of them before turning around to continue her way.

It was kind of Tetsuko to give out free services like that but Kaneo prayed that the day he took up that offer will not come at all. From the expression of Boniface, Kaneo concluded that he was thinking the exact same thought. When Tetsuko turned around, Kaneo saw three large words stitched on her upper back. 'Apparatus Hominis Futurum', it was done in black and gold stitching, written in cursive with an 'h+'.

"You know, whether the killing game is a joke – which I believe so – or not, it's clearly wearing everybody down." Boniface pursed his lips when the door shut upon the exit of Tetsuko. "They may not have that argument if we did not fear for our lives."

Kaneo did see the reason behind Boniface's words and could not help but agree. The fear creeping at the back of their mind was slowly trying to take over their rational thoughts. Even if there were those who did not believe in the whole killing game, the tiny seed of doubt was still there waiting to grow and bloom into a cruel and dirty flower.

"It may be a joke…But the fact that we were trapped in here with close to zero knowledge is worrying." Boniface removed his mask – revealing steel blue eyes – before pinching his forehead in frustration. Taking a few moments to count to 10, he relaxed and placed his mask back to his face again. "Who knows, this might really be all a big joke. Even if its' not, I'm sure we can all get through this anyway." Boniface straightened his back and gave a confident look towards Kaneo.

While Kaneo knew that what Boniface said held some kind of truth, he had a sinking feeling that things will not go the way they all wanted. But it's good to have some kind of hope right? Kaneo refused to vocalize his thoughts out loud to the guy standing beside him for fear of setting things in the wrong direction. Instead, he let out a quiet agreement to what Boniface said.

Seeing that Kaneo had no intention to continue the conversation, Boniface excused himself to the kitchen to get his long needed glass of cool water and left Kaneo standing under the wisteria tree. Kaneo was not even aware of the departure of Boniface as he stood there lost in his own racing mind. He bit harshly on his lower lip to the point that he drew blood but he paid no heed to it. The burning feeling in his chest refused to go away and Kaneo was getting anxious from his own thoughts.

He shook his head repeatedly to clear his mind before looking around him and that was when he realized that Boniface had left. Blinking a few times, Kaneo scratched the back of his head before heading to the kitchen himself to get his late breakfast. After getting a plate filled with food, he sat on one of the tables scattered in the diner before digging in. Just when he was left with the last few bites of his breakfast turned branch, the door of diner opened once again.

* * *

Deleted scene

Kaneo woke up to bight whit-

Blinking his eyes rapidly to chase the sleepiness away and to refocus his eyesight, Kaneo slowly came to a realization to what was right in front of his face – the face of Aoi.

Pulling his blanket over his head, Kaneo was sure that he was still dreaming – more accurately, a nightmare – and he tried his best to fall back into his peaceful dream.

Aoi droned on and on about how Kaneo should look around the whole Rebirth Point for the limited plushies of the magnificent him to get a more limited edition of him. Aoi pushed a plushie of himself right onto Kaneo's face as he pestered the tried boy to do what he said.

"Come on come on come on come on."

With a shout of frustration, Kaneo smacked the plushie away from his face and pushed Aoi off the bed before laying back down on his bed to go back to sleep.

He was stabbed goddamnit, at least let him have his sleep instead of being pestered by an annoying pest about something totally meaningless. He has no patience to play nice in his current state.

And that was how the idea for the hunt for plushies was rejected.

* * *

 _ **WHITE**_

 _White_

 _white…_

 _Red…_

 _…Red_

 _r **E** D_

 _ **RED!**_

 _._

 _Don't look at me_

 _Please…_

 _I'm sorry…_

 _Just don't leave me alone…_

 _Stay with me forever…_

 _Please…_

 _…Please._

 _._

 _I must remain strong._

 _It won't do for us to break down here._

 _It's alright._

 _I did came all this way and survived many obstacles._

 _If the others are too afraid, I will stand with them and encourage them._

 _We will survive through all this and return home in one piece._

 _All we need to do is trust each other._

* * *

AN:

Whelp, is there anyone here? Hello...? Time for my rambling I guess...o_o

1\. Okay, first thing first. I received a lovely drawing of Boniface Hyakushi since a looooooonnnngggg time ago by his creator, ShyJoker. So, here it is. The link can be found on my profile as well. Remove the spacings.

little - shy - joker . deviantart art / Rebirth-Point-Boniface-Hyakusin-660718135

2\. As usual, can the creators (If you are still around) of these characters tell me how well/badly I wrote them?

3\. Since quite a number of characters are introduced in this chapter, what are your thoughts on them and who is/are your favourite(s)?

4\. Well, I do know basic first aid – even though my license technically expired a few months ago and I can't call myself a first aider anymore – so hopefully I did not screw up the process of dressing a wound? Get an actual first aider to teach you, not me.

5\. Someone told me that it is not Danganronpa if there is no some type of fanservice. So…I included some subtle fanservices with some suggestions from my friend. This is what I got what you guys get. So… yeah… Don't kill me? Take this longer than usual chapter and spare my life.(Especially due to the late update.)

6\. Special thanks to ShyJoker, tobi-is-an-artisit-too, TheRoseShadow21, Go-nela, Shouta Izukai and ComplicatedYetSimple for reviewing on the previous chapter!

 **Review:**

Go-nela: Hey there! Thank you for your kind words and I am glad that you like it here. It's great to know that you are enjoying yourself! Hey, don't beat yourself up over that, I am sure that you will be able to find someone of similar interest as you. If you don't mind talking to me, you can always send me a PM and we can start from there. If you wait for me to post a new chapter to reply you...well...you won't be getting a reply so fast...as you can see... ***Sweat***

Have a swell day everyone! See you in the next chapter!


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